Back in the Black Bayou
by The Konfessionist
Summary: A search mission takes a terrifying turn for Emmy and Charon in Point Lookout, but offers Charon an opportunity he never believed to be possible. The catch? In order to obtain this golden opportunity, he will have to do the unthinkable.
1. The Hearse Song

**A/N: Hey, guys! For any of you guys reading this, this story was posted a LONG time ago and was intended to be a 2-3 chapter oneshot piece. Unfortunately, I had never posted the third chapter, and final installment, of this piece so I decided that I'd finish the third chapter, touch up the first two chapters, and post it again so the story would be completed and you guys wouldn't be left hanging because I'm lazy and dumb!**

**I am SO sorry for the HUGE gap between the second and third chapter! For anyone who's read the first two before my repost, I'd highly suggest that you read it from the very beginning because even though not much has been changed, mostly grammar and wording, a few things HAVE been added in that you'd probably want to take a gander at! Anywho, on with the show~!**

_**Summary: The Lone Wanderer and Charon are taken to Point Lookout to look for Nadine when their mission takes a terrifying turn of events, but offers up an opportunity to Charon that he never thought would be possible. The kicker? If he wishes to embellish in this opportunity, he will have to force his hand and do the unthinkable.**_

**I hope you guys enjoy the story, now that the final chapter's been posted! c:**

**Happy reading, happy writing!**

**~The Konfessionist**

* * *

><p><em>Black water Hattie lived back in the swamp<em>

_Where the strange green reptiles crawl._

_Snakes hang thick from the cypress trees,_

_Like sausage on a smokehouse wall._

_Where the swamp is alive with a thousand eyes—_

_An' all of 'em watching you._

_Stay off the track to Hattie's shack,_

_in the back of the Black Bayou._

* * *

><p>Charon pulled his foot free of the marshy bog, giving a long scowl as it crept off the toe of his boot, imitating the movements of a fat, black slug, and <em>plop<em>ped back into the marsh bed he stepped in with a miniscule splash. He was wading in calf-deep swamp, muck, and mud—and for _what?_

"_Charon!_ Look at what I found!"

The ghoul gave a long string of grumbles under his breath from deep within his throat as he waded his way out of the marsh bed to come to his employer's side. Emmy was crouched in front of something, her knees folded and held against her chest with an arm wrapped around them, her rump an inch or so shy of the ground as her free hand plucked up what she had called his attention to. Her head twisted towards him, grinning at the mud and putrid swamp gunk that clung to his footwear.

"Go for a swim, big guy?"

He gave an unamused grunt in reply instead of dignifying her question with a legitimate answer. Looking to the item in her hands, he recognized it to be a cloth doll which was covered in dried mud—thick brown yarn adorned it's hair, the purple dress it wore was ripped and horribly stained, and black stitching created a cheery smile and held in place a single black button while its twin hung from the doll's face by a thin line of frayed thread that was obviously close to completely breaking.

"Is that a—… _doll?_"

"Yeah, it is." Emmy nodded, looking back down at it and brushed a single lock of yawn hair out of it's face. "The swamp folks make figures out of bone and twigs to mark their territory deeper into the swamp. If you get deep enough in, you can even see that they sometimes even hang _dolls _from them."

"I am well aware of that—you have explained this to me before." He deadpanned.

"But I haven't seen something like _this_ before." Emmy got to her feet and tossed the doll to him with a slight huff at being told that she was repeating information. It was something she did often; whether it was out of habit or if she wasn't really conscious of the fact that she did it, he didn't know.

The doll released an airy noise as Charon caught it. He inspected it with the remainder of sunlight the two had as the sun fell over the flat plains of marsh land that was Point Lookout, and it reminded him that the duo had to return to the Duchess Gambit soon because the swamp was no place that _anyone_ would want to be stuck in during the night. At least back at the paddle boat the worst he had to worry about was Tobar being his bizarrely chipper self (which Charon understood, though it made him uneasy—the bastard ferryman made a killing off of all of the caps Emmy had spent for their tickets to and from Point Lookout). Out in the swamp itself, it was any man's game from the demented locals to a feral ghoul wandering into their camp, and the problem with games out in the Wasteland was that they didn't come packaged with a rule book.

"Do you notice anything… _strange,_ about that doll?" Emmy spoke as she rose up from the ground to her feet, staring at the doll that she tossed to him.

"...Emmy I'm a bodyguard. Not a toymaker. It looks like any other doll we've seen in this swamp."

"Maybe, but this one seems more dressed up then all the others we've seen... the others were so—_plain Jane _compared to this one."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, _look _at it!" She cried, pointing down at it. "The yarn for the hair's curled, the dress has print on it, it's got makeup painted onto it… and look! It even has shoes! And a mole on it's cheek!"

Charon knew that from his employer's observations the toy was uncannily detailed when compared to those hung up by the swamp folk. He had once figured that the locals had possibly come across a whole stockpile of them to have so many to make the figurines that marked their territory; but a few days ago, they had been captured by a few who called themselves "poachers" and the two watched from their containment cell as one of them actually _made _the dolls with scrap cloth, yawn, needle, and thread. The freak actually _sewed _the doll together and made the clothes… Charon had never seen anything more peculiar in his life—and that was certainly saying something when had had an employer like Emmy. He had been with her since she was attacked by super mutants outside of Underworld and Willow had dragged her half-dead hide to safety within the front entry of their ghoul settlement. He had to leave the Ninth Circle (after Winthrop managed to scrounge up enough caps for Ahzrukhal to pay for the bodyguard's services) and help Cerberus clear out the remaining riled up super mutants who dared to get close enough to Underworld to try and finish what they started with Emmy.

That was… well, almost a _year_ ago, now—and not until a month or so after his contract was bought by her was he told that the only reason why she had been anywhere _near _the Mall a second time (the first time was something about a relay dish that she didn't talk about in detail) was to deliver to Carol a letter from her son.

Charon hadn't even been aware that Carol _had _a son—or rather, he hadn't been aware that the hotel owner had 'adopted' Gob. He figured Gob was dead, he had been gone for 15 years.

"What do you think about it?" Emmy asked, biting her thin bottom lip.

"I think you're getting paranoid over a doll that's a little dressed up compared to the others." Charon dropped the toy into the swamp gunk at his feet, stepping onto it carelessly as he walked past her. A familiar pouting whimper emitted from behind him as she gingerly removed it from the mud and tried her best to wipe off the fresh mud it was laced with till it was, somewhat, cleaner.

"I think she's kinda pretty…" She smiled, holding her as a child would have—with a loving light flickering in her wide blue eyes. "I think I'll call her… _Estelle._" She giggled. "Yeah, she looks like an Estelle to me!"

"Are you _honestly_ planning on taking that filthy thing with us, Emmy?" He asked in a grumble.

"Well, why not? It can be a souvenir from our first trip to Point Lookout!"

"...You know what a better souvenir would be? Finding that tomboy so I can blow her head off for making us come out here."

"Hey! That's not very nice! And besides, Nadine didn't make us do _anything._ I couldn't just leave her mother hanging on so desperately like that! You coulda stayed home, anyways!"

"My contract states that I am to be within close vicinity of my employer at _all _times to keep him or her safe unless otherwise told to remain put." He explained, shooting her blunt daggers with his milky eyes. "You didn't tell me to remain home."

"You know, if I recall correctly, _you_ were the one threatening to feed Tobar to the mirelurks nesting near the shore if you couldn't come with me~!" Emmy giggled, recalling the panicked expression the ferryman had made.

"I wasn't going to allow you to travel to dangerous, foreign lands without me where you could be injured, or worse, and without my assistance." Charon snipped. "And "_can't make group trips"_ my decomposing ass. He was lying."

"Oh _really?_ How do you know that?"

"The riverboat's fit to hold more than just him and you—it's well maintained and spacious so he most likely figured that you'd offer to pay extra to bring me with you if you were that desperate for me to come. Not only that, but determining if someone was supplying me with false information was part of my training to become a bodyguard." He explained as she fell into step with him, clutching the doll she named "Estelle" against her practically bare chest. She was currently donning the outfit the crazed, punga-praising Tribals wore. She claimed that it helped to keep her cover with them in case they were watching, but he knew that she actually _liked _wearing it because she _despised _wearing armor of any type. She said it made it hard for her to move around and it was heavy. It tired her out easily (which he knew, because she could barely outrun a radroach without exhausting herself).

"So could you tell if _I'm _lying?" She asked with a grin.

"Is that a challenge?"

"It most _certainly _is, my big, irritable friend!" She laughed. He sighed grumpily. She continued on. "Okay! For my tenth birthday in the Vault, I was given a job to help make it a better place. I had to help the elderly. True or false?"

"False."

"_Woah._ How'd you know that?"

"I've travelled with you long enough to know your tell." Charon clarified as he glanced up to the sky. "We're going in the wrong direction. The dock is that way," He pointed to the far right of them.

Emmy removed the cloth wrapping she had around her Pip-Boy (another ploy to gain the Tribals' trust, as they didn't necessarily _appreciate _technology of any sort) and fiddled with the map interface to see where they were.

"Oh, you're right. Yeah, Tobar is back that way." They turned to the direction he pointed at and made their way through the scrawny trees, their upraised roots littered amongst sprouting punga fruit buds. "So what's a—… a _tell?_"

"A sort of mannerism that many people have that questions the honesty of a statement that they have given."

"…Ye-_aaaah_ I'm not following you…"

"How do I simplify this?… For example, a woman lies about her birthday. She was born on April 4th, 2253 but tells anyone she meets that she was born on October 20th, 2255. When she gives this false information, her body does something involuntarily that reveals that she is lying. Like her eye twitches, or she licks her lips or flares her nostrils. Sometimes it can be so subtle you don't even see it, other times it's as obvious as a knife sticking out of your back."

"Oh. _I see now!_" Emmy smiled. "So what's my tell?"

"Supply me with a few more stories and I will tell you."

She huffed. "_Fine._ Lemme think, now… Hmn. Alright, I got one! My favorite color is blue."

"False."

"…Creepy. Okay! I needa think of another one now, don't I? Erm… my favorite food is Insta-Mash."

"True."

"These are too simple!"

"I'm not the one coming up with the stories... " Charon shot back with a raised brow.

"Hush. Alright, I've gotta tricky one! Back in Vault 101, I was made fry-cook 'cause of that stupid G.O.A.T. exam. I served chocolate pudding to customers."

"Emmy, what kind of story is _that?_" He snapped without any actual bite in his words.

"A _good _kinda story if you haven't told me if it's true or false!" She declared triumphantly. "Give up?"

"False."

"Wait—_what?_"

"False. You served them strawberry pudding."

"…You're starting to freak me out. I was looking more for a "False. You weren't a fry-cook" kinda answer." She admitted, gazing up at him.

"But you _were _a fry-cook."

"How did you _even—?_"

"You've told me this story before. Besides, you have explained to me that you are deathly allergic to chocolate. Coming into contact with chocolate pudding would have sent you into anaphylactic shock."

"Alright, alright, you got me." She smiled a little, as if in admiration that he remembered that. "Last one. My full name is Emmalyn Susanne Phillips."

"False. Your name is Emmalyn _Mary-_Anne Phillips."

Upon hearing her true name pass his lips, Emmy stopped right in her tracks and gawked at him; her eyes wide, thin lips pulled into an 'O' of surprise as her jaw went slack. He halted at her side when he noticed that she had stopped moving.

"Ho- How did you—?..."

"Know? _Because I do._ As your bodyguard, not only do I need to know the basics about myself so whoever holds my contract knows how to make good use of me, but I need to know the basics about _you._ Like your severe allergy to chocolate."

She whistled in awe, thumbing Estelle's hair as she continued to gawk at him. "Pretty cool, big guy. So what's my tell?"

"You purse your lips together."

"_What?_"

"You purse your lips together," Charon repeated. "You bring them tightly together."

"I _so _do not!" She cried in embarrassment, pursing her lips together with her bottom lip sticking out in a pout. Her thin eyebrows furrowed down over her big blue eyes, and her petite nose, dotted with freckles, scrunched up as if she had smelled something foul. The whole muddy _swamp _smelled of something foul—from the gas bubbles to the local wildlife of the "swamp folk," it had a different aroma than the Capital Wasteland. The Capital smelled dry and dusty, while this place smelled damp and muddy and obnoxious with fumes. The Capital had rocky formations and rolling hills of every dead plant you could imagine while Point Lookout was flat plains of swamp land with resurrected shrines of bone intertwined with twigs to make horrifying figurines in the dark.

"You did it, just now." He stated with some amusement in his accented and ruined voice.

"…Shaddup." Emmy looked to the sky. "Sheesh—it's getting dark _really _fast. That's not good."

"Indeed, it isn't." He scanned his eyes across the swamp plains. "We should keep moving."

"Aye, aye!" She smiled, falling into step with him with Estelle hanging over one arm as she pulled out her plasma pistol.

"The rounds are slow—use that rifle I found you." He ordered, looking to the weapon in her hands.

"They're slow but _effective!_" She argued.

"Rifle." He replied simply, as if talking to a child.

"_Fine!_" She grumbled sourly, putting the plasma pistol back in its holster on her hip and removed the lever-action rifle he had found for her from her pack—the butt of it jutting up from the mouth for easy access in case they were suddenly jumped by whatever enemies inhabited the swamp. She pulled it up over her shoulder and cocked it, holding it in front of her steadily. Estelle fell from her arm as she did, and she stopped to pick her up.

"Emmy, we need to keep moving." He said as he stopped again to wait for her, looking to the rapidly darkening sky. What was it _with _this place? It was getting darker and darker at an alarming rate, and it sometimes rained while in the Capital they had rad-storms.

"I'm comin', I'm _comin'!_ Don't get your knickers in a knot," She murmured as she brushed more mud off of Estelle and jogged up to him. "I wonder why she's prettier than the others…"

"It is _just _a doll, Emmy," If he had a nose, he'd be squeezing the bridge in irritation right now. "Let's just keep moving. The path back to the fairgrounds should be past this tree grove."

"Really? That fast?" She asked in surprise as she removed the flap of cloth from her Pip-Boy and activated it, fiddling with the map interface. "My Pip-Boy says otherwise."

"My apologies. How much further?"

"It… ot says we're going the wrong way," Emmy murmured, squinting at the glowing green screen as if she couldn't see it properly with a frown pulling at her lips.

"The wrong way?" He looked back at the thin outlet of scrawny trees they passed to arrive in the small patch of large trees with low, hangings limbs—flimsy and dancing in the breeze to whistle amongst the thin leaves. No, they had walked straight—this was the right way. Emmy even confirmed it with her Pip-Boy map before they went in the direction only moments ago. How could they have been going in the wrong direction?

_Maybe she got it wrong… then that would mean I was incorrect as well._ But, deep down, he _knew _he was going the right way… he could have _sworn _he pointed them in the right direction… didn't he?

"Here, see for yourself!" She hoisted the Pip-Boy up into his face unceremoniously and he pushed it back with a throaty growl, looking back into the screen. It stated that they were going too far right. The arrow was pointing left, now—as in back in the direction where they had come.

"…Fine," Charon finally snarled. He didn't want to have to argue with an inanimate object when they were running out of time to leave. "We need to hurry. It's going to rain soon."

"You're worried about the _rain?_"

"I'm worried about what will happen if it starts to rain and we are caught by the swamp locals." He explained, turning to the direction the Pip-Boy stated they had to walk. She followed close behind him with Estelle in her arm, her rifle held in front of her as before. "The bogs become slippery—and it could suck you down below."

Emmy shuddered at the thought of suffocating under the swamp gunk. "That'd suck."

"I never thought I'd say this—let's just get back to Tobar."

"_Aw,_ do you miss him?" She teased.

"As much as I miss the deathclaws and yao guai back in the Capital," He deadpanned, eyes flicking around. The full moon above was casting eerie shadows amongst the trees, barely illuminating where they walked amongst the swamp. Bone and stone figures, hanging dolls like that of a disturbed child's recreation of the gallows, the dolls swung back and forth in the gentle wind—almost making it sound as if they were _laughing._

_Laughing?_ He pondered, immediately halting his walk so Emmy slammed against his backside unexpectedly. He swiftly caught her by the arm before she even had the chance to lose her footing. _Yes, there's laughter—somewhere nearby._

"Do you hear something?" She squeaked, gripping his forearm to better steady herself. Estelle landed in the mud, and Emmy innocently cursed under her breath (_"Crud,"_ she muttered) as she bent over to pick up the doll.

"_Don't. __**Move.**_" Charon hissed, and she immediately stopped, half-way bent over with her arm outstretched to the doll. She snapped her head up to him, causing her thin, pale brown hair to fall into her wide blue eyes.

"Wha- _What is it?_" Emmy whispered to him, still making no attempt to move.

"_Laughter._" He whispered back, straining his hearing. He heard nothing this time.

"Heh. Getting _paranoid _in your old age now _aren't _you, Charon?" She giggled quietly.

"I'm not that old," He shot back. _Nor am I that stupid—I __**know **__what I heard._ He tacked on mentally.

"How old are you, anyways?"

"Sixty-two and still counting."

"You were sixty-_two _when you turned into a ghoul?" She asked with wide eyes, bending over more to pick up Estelle from the ground once Charon had given her the 'all clear' gesture.

"No. I am sixty-two _now._ I was twenty-one when I turned into a ghoul—we don't stop counting the years after we endure ghoulification, Emmy."

Emmy gazed up at him with wide eyes as she brushed Estelle clean. _Again._ "Wait, so… you're _not _a Pre-War ghoul?"

"No. I was born in the Capital Wasteland. I'm considered to be "young" compared to some of the other ghouls that hung around Underworld."

"…Wow. That's—wow."

"What is?" Charon turned over his broad shoulder to look down at her. She shrugged.

"I dunno. I've talked to ghouls who were born _after _the bombs fell…" She looked down at Estelle in her hands. "I just never expected you to be—_**eep!**_" She cried with her eyes snapping wide open as she dropped the doll back onto the mucky ground in a muddy puddle, causing it to splash up onto their boots.

"What? What is it?" He stepped towards her hurriedly.

"E- Estelle… the _doll…_" Emmy muttered, shaking her head as she stared down at it with wide eyes of disbelief, a shaking hand clasped over her mouth.

"What about it?" He asked, picking up the doll from the ground. The mud dripped from its curled, yarn hair and down its legs.

"She—She _frowned _at me!"

"…That's it. No more punga fruit for you." He declared, turning the doll over to have his own eyes widen in disbelief, brow furrowing. "_**What **__the—?..._"

Estelle's other black eye was coming loose, so both of them hung from her face by thinning thread while the black stitching for her mouth, that he was _positive_ was a smile when they first found her, was turned down into a frown and ripped open—almost as if she were trying to scream. Soiled cotton stuffing spell from the deformed orifice in tufts while mud streamed down from her plush cheeks from where her eyes once were, and in the moonlight, it made it look like blood—like she was crying blood from her missing button eyes.

_That fruit… now __**I'm **__seeing things, too. Damnit. I __**knew**__ we should have bought more boxes of food from that woman at the carnival boardwalk instead of eating those damn things._

"You still want to take her?" He jabbed.

"N- No _fucking _way!" Emmy cried, shaking her head quickly. "Just—! Just get rid of it! It creeps me the _fuck _out, now!"

Charon immediately spun on his heel and pulled his arm back the moment she shook her head, pitching the toy across the plain so it landed in a thatch of shrubs over the trees before turning back to her.

"Are you alright?"

"N- No! I just wanna get back to the fucking docks!" She shrieked, coming closer to him with her rifle pointing down at the ground. "I'm scared, Charon—the swamps freak me out at night! I don't wanna get ambushed and dragged away again! Can we please _go_ now?"

"Emmy, I won't allow that to happen again. We'll be out of here soon, so don't worry." He assured her with a hand clapping down on one of her shoulders. It was rare when Emmy swore, and the only instances where the profanities dribbled from her lips was when she was starting to become terrified and was beginning to break down. He had to get her out of the swamp—and _fast—_because when she got to a certain level of terror, she would just start _screaming _and _sobbing._ It would attract any damn thing around them in a two mile radius with how the echo carried in these parts.

"Pr- _Promise?_" She choked, looking around nervously, chewing on her bottom lip.

"I promise. Come with me—we just need to get out of the trees where we can see the dock. I know that there's an open grove that we passed through just beyond the path that leads back to the fairgrounds. Turn off your Pip-Boy, or put the cover back over it or _something. _The light is going to attract something that I would prefer _wouldn't _follow us."

Emmy nodded and secured the cloth over it quickly, then checked over her weapon with trembling hands as she followed him—always one step behind him but never at his side or in front of him. That was a problem. When she walked ahead of him, it meant that she was in her "A-Game" and she was determined and confident. At his side, it meant that she was comfortable and had nothing troubling her and was relaxed. But when she walked _behind _him—it signified that she was worried, nervous, scared, anxious, angry, sad, or even all of the above. She was falling into the pit quicker than he expected. He _had_ to keep her calm and quiet.

"Come here," Charon demanded. Her eyes snapped up to him—his sudden words in the midst of long silence had startled her. She scurried closer to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and buried her head into his ribcage. He found that having Emmy hold something, or someone, always made her come back down quicker then trying to talk her down—he didn't understand how physical contact assured her more than words did, but he understood that people dealt with fear using different methods.

"Watch your step." He cautioned, helping her over a dead log in their path. Her boots sunk into the muck and she pulled them out quickly to continue holding onto him. Her breathing was returning to normal, her eyes weren't rapidly darting around, and she was beginning to hum "Butcher Pete" to herself quietly.

But _right _when he thought that the method was working, he heard it—singing. It was faint, but it was undoubtedly there. He didn't want to say anything to Emmy since she had just calmed down, but as he discreetly pulled for his combat knife that was strapped to his thigh, it was too late. She heard it, too; her humming hitched in her throat and she clung onto him tighter.

"Cha- Charon! I hear singing!"

"Stick close to me, Emmy." He demanded, his lips pulling back in a snarl as he sheathed his combat knife and pulled his combat shotgun from his back over his shoulder, scanning the darkness for any source of movement. The singing continued in the distance, almost as if _taunting _the both of them… he didn't know what it was, or who it was, because he knew the locals didn't sound like _that _with their strange way of talking, and how they slurred and drawled over each word with their hick-like accents_._ The singing sounded scratchy and choked, but somehow… _mesmerizing _and melancholy.

"Whe- Where is it _fucking __**coming **_from?" Emmy squeaked, clinging closer to him with her rifle shaking in her hands. "Charon, let's just make a run for it!" She pleaded.

"_Keep your voice down._" He whispered, turning to look at her from the corner of his eyes. "_Which way do we go?_"

She carefully peeled up a corner of the cloth covering her Pip-Boy and flipped to the map interface. Her eyes drew wide open in the ominous green glow, and they began to water up out of fear and panic.

"_Emmy?_"

"Cha- _Charon-…_" She pounded her fist against it desperately and looked up at him. "It- It's not working!"

"What do you _mean _it's not working?" He hissed, before inwardly reprimanding himself for not whispering any longer.

"L- Look!"

Charon stepped back and grabbed her arm by the wrist, pulling the Pip-Boy up to his face to look at it. The map was present—the same grid with all the marked locations, but the triangle that symbolized herposition… it was spinning in fast, erratic circles, as if she were just twirling around in the middle of the swamp. The marker that represented him was absent, as if he wasn't amongst her.

"_What the—?..._" He let her arm drop from his hands and gazed around at the surroundings. The singing lingered amongst them, like the fog that clung low to the ground in the midst of the night. He felt the first cool plop of rain land on his forehead to run down between his eyes and down his cheek. He looked up to the sky.

_Something must be interfering with the Pip-Boy…_ Charon tried reasoning, looking back at her. _Something in the swamp. Who __**knows **__what's been sucked down into the bog over the years?_

"Cha- Charon _please!_ Let's just run!"

"We can't without direction, we might just run deeper into enemy territory that way." He explained strictly, looking back around them as he tried to make out their surroundings for something familiar, the thin drizzle of the first coming of rain pattering on the shoulder pads of his armor. He didn't see anything that looked _remotely _similar to anything he had in his vast databank of memory, and then it hit him. It hit him like a power fist right to the fucking head.

_We haven't mapped this area yet._

He began to feel uneasy but made sure not to display it because it would scare Emmy even more. She knew that when _he _got nervous, the shit really hit the fan and that it was the right time to scream bloody murder. _The only section of Point Lookout we haven't mapped is deeper in—anything north of the poachers shack hasn't been catalogued… __**damnit! **__Have we __**really **__walked this far in?_

He tried to recall the last marker they hit. He and Emmy had gone to the sacred bog to check out the Mother Punga plant (as the Tribals had told her that she need to become 'enlightened' in order to gain entrance), but they had been warded off by swamp folk that had horded themselves around the to the plant's location entrance. Instead of fighting him, Charon had mentioned that it'd be a bit of a walk back to the docks and that they needed a resupply soon so they were in no shape to fight five of the well-armed locals. So they left and travelled… south-east.

_But that __**can't **__be right! If we're this deep into the swamp, we must have gone north. We couldn't have been going the wrong way all this time!_

"_Charon?_" Emmy squeaked. "I think you should come take a look at this…"

"What is it now?" Charon turned to her. "Is your Pip-Boy working again?"

"N- No…" She looked up at him with tears streaking down her face while her breathing came shallow and quick, and her face paled in the eerie green glow of her Pip-Boy screen; causing the freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and her cheeks to look darker than they normally were. Her bangs were matted to her forehead and the curves of her jaw and neck from the rain.

"What's wrong? _Emmy?_" He grabbed her shoulders to get back her attention. "Emmy, what's wrong?"

"We—… we disappeared… from the map…" She choked out, staring up into his face blankly. Her face began to contort into the face she made right before she began wailing in her frightened state. "_We're not on the __**map **__anymore!_"

Charon grabbed her Pip-Boy and held it up to his face again. It was still on the map interface tab, and he stared with his wide eyes focused on where their location arrow had once been spinning round and round was _gone._ The map markers were gone, too. They didn't know if they were near any sort of building or civilization, they didn't know how far they were from the dock or even a little nook to make camp in. They didn't know where they were at _all._

Suddenly, the screen changed in the middle of him inspecting it. It flipped over to the interface that gave a radius of their surroundings—which was effective for detecting hostiles. A lone square, signalling that someone was just past the thick grove of trees ahead of them, was moving. It wasn't red, meaning that it was a neutral party.

_But for all we know it could be someone who __**is **__hostile, but isn't aware of our presence._

Charon was pulled from his thoughts to look at Emmy, who was hiccupping and trying to stifle her cries. She slapped at her eyes with the back of her hands, trying to wipe away her tears but it smeared dirt on her mousy face instead.

"_Emmy, you have to keep quiet. There's someone just ahead of us,"_ He pointed through the grove of trees. "_I don't know if they are ally or enemy, so you need to keep quiet and follow me so we can find out, alright?_"

"_Wha- What if it's an enemy?_"

"_We kill whoever it is and loot their stuff. Who knows—they could have shelter for us._"

"_I am __**not **__st- staying out __**here**__ for the night!_" She struggled to keep her voice in that hoarse whisper. She griped her rifle so tightly, her knuckles turned white.

"_We have no __**choice.**__ We don't know where we are, it's dark, it is now __**raining **__and we need to find shelter or the swamp people will __**find **__us—alright?_"

Emmy sucked in a deep breath which caused her to choke on her stifled sobs. She nodded her head.

"_O- Okay…_"

"_Your Pip-Boy says that they are just ahead of us, past the grove of trees and—_" He looked back down at the Pip-Boy, his cracked lips clamping tightly together when his eyes focused on the location of the lone, neutral square. It was gone now, and her triangle and his custom radius marker had returned.

"Where- Where'd they _go?_"

"I don't know…" He froze up when he scanned the magnified radius of their location once more. The lone square was gone from beyond the grove, but was back as well, and was now positioned…

…_Oh God…_

"Emmy—_do __**not **__move._" Charon hissed through clenched yellow teeth.

She looked like she was going to be sick—and in her effort to stay still, her body began to tremble as she stared up at him with her wide blue eyes overflowing with tears.

"Wha- _What is it?_"

The enemy radius showed Emmy's triangle, his square standing on her left, but _another _neutral square was standing with them. _Right _behind Emmy. He carefully shifted his eyes over her head—as she was several inches shorter than he—but no one was there, even in the darkness, he could see that it was just the two of them alone. No one was amongst them.

_Something is __**really **__screwing with her Pip-Boy…_ He growled. _Or maybe it's a bug or something…_

"We need to go. Now."

"_I'm __**all **__fucking for that!_" She cried, looking down at her Pip-Boy and her mouth dropped open when she saw the lone square that accompanied them. She spun on her heel and began to shoot her rifle wildly.

"_Emmy!_" Charon exclaimed, grabbing for her arms to keep her from shooting anymore. "Stop wasting your rounds! There's _no one _there!"

"My- My Pip-Boy said there was!" She croaked, spinning around to face him. "Cha- Charon I'm _scared… I'm so scared!_" She dropped her gun into the mud and flung her arms around him to bury her face into his chest. "_I ju- just wanna go home! I don't wanna fucking __**be here **__anymore! I—"_

She stopped when her Pip-Boy made a quiet _beep._ She pulled back from him to look down at it in alarm.

"It—... the life marker… it's gone now." She said with some relief, and gave him a nervous smile. "I—… I think my Pip-Boy's broken. Or it's the punga we ate… probably a bad batch… yeah, that's it! None of this is really happening! None of it's real, it's all just hallucinations!..."

Charon looked down at her Pip-Boy to see if she was right—and she was. The lone square that was with them was now gone, and no longer behind her. He was about to allow himself a deep sigh of relief despite their situation, when it got _worse._ Another lone square flickered on the interface, just appearing out of _nowhere _on the screen to the very far corner of the grove as the rain continued to pound down on them. He wiped the droplets away from the screen and concentrated his milky eyes on that one square. Another appeared on the other very far side of the grove, out of _nowhere,_ like the first one. Then another, and another, and another—all frantically dotting along the screen like the drops of rain that were beginning to fall from the dark sky in thick sheets. Thunder boomed overhead, causing Emmy to cry out and bring herself closer to him. The squares were pushing up like daisies all over the interface, all in clusters of three or four or even _five _around them. They were suddenly surrounded—and they didn't know by what.

_This can't be right—this can't be __**happening.**_

Another clap of thunder boomed over their heads, illuminating the grove surrounded by a circlet of trees with a strike of lightning.

Dolls.

Dolls. All around.

The strike of lightning revealed that they were surrounded by dolls hung on figures of bone intertwined with sticks. Each doll was intricately detailed—some had peeling cloth skin, some were smooth and in different shades with different articles of clothing, their button eyes different colors, their yarn hair in different styles… all smiling, but no two were exactly the same.

_Just like Estelle._

Charon stood in place, eyes darting around to each figure of bone and stick and doll while Emmy twisted and turned to face every which direction in a frenzied panic—her wide, horrified eyes gazing back into the faces of the dolls, pelted by the cold rain. Various laughter of all voices raised up from the bog mud, looming into the air as if weaving around each figurine to come for them, reaching their ears in a taunting melody when Emmy's Pip-Boy began to sound off in a desperate attempt to get her attention. It turned into a symphony of beeps as on the interface, each of the neutral squares turned bright red around them, working in wave after wave till it finally reached the middle where they stood together in the grove. Only her triangle and his neutral square remained in the sea of red squares, and when lightning struck again, the dolls became _hideously _deformed. Hanging from their gallows with scowling faces and torn apart mouths, looking as if they were bleeding out from their button eyes, some missing arms and legs and a few were actually missing their _heads._ Buttons lost, their faces pulled into gruesome screams of agony and horror, thick strands of yarn for hair missing from their grimy scalps.

And then the laughter turned to horrified screams and yelps and wails from every direction all around them.

"_I'm sorry!"_

"—_didn't mean to!"_

"_I thought this was what you wanted!"_

"_I'm __**dying!**__"_

"_Help me!"_

"_Somebody!"_

"_**PLEASE!**__"_

Emmy screamed as she darted past Charon in terror, tears streaming down her face while the rain pounded down on her.

"_**Emmy!**_" Charon boomed with the thunder and took off after her, his boots sinking into the muck before being pulled up to take another step forward. She wove through the grotesque forms of the dolls that continued to scream, and he followed her, only about a meter or two behind when she suddenly disappeared from his sight. Just—_disappeared. _Like she never really existed.

"Emmy! _Emmy!" _He roared, skidding to a stop in the mud to bring up his shotgun, looking around for anything that would suddenly dart out at him. "_Emmy __**answer me,**__ God dammit!_"

"_**CHARON!**_" She screeched from somewhere behind him. He turned around and ran towards her screaming. "_**CHARON!**_" She screamed again.

"_Shit!_" He called out, skidding to a halt and landing flat on his back in the muck when a giant hole in the ground loomed in front of his feet, suddenly appearing. Gaping wide, sprouts of tall, broken weeds circled the mouth, almost like teeth. He saw fingers digging into the mud from the edge, clasping onto a thick root.

"_Charon! __**Help me!**_"

Charon got to his knees immediately and crawled over, grabbing her arms at the wrist to pull her up. It was hard to get a good grip on her—her arms were slippery from the mud that coated it. It didn't help that he was covered in the slick swamp gunk, either.

"_Grab onto me!_" He roared, and she immediately wrapped her thin fingers around his thick wrists. He began to pull her up, removing one arm to wrap it around her torso under her arms as he continued to pull to try to hoist her out of the hole.

But then, he felt a pair of hands upon his back and he was pushed before he could counteract—and the muddy edge of the mouth of the hole gave out underneath him. He went tumbling in after Emmy, pulling her to him and she curled up in his arms as her scream echoed out into the darkness around them. Charon kept her close, arms wrapped tight around her trembling body, and he closed his eyes; falling to the scratchy and choked but mesmerizing voice singing;

"_Don't you ever __**laugh**__ as the hearse goes by—for you may be the next to __**die! **__They wrap you up in a big white sheet, from your head, down to your feet! They put you in a big black box and cover you up with dirt and rocks—and all goes well for about a week, but then your coffin begins to __**leak! **__The worms crawl __**in,**__ the worms crawl __**out! **__The worms play __**pinochle**__ on your snout! They eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your __**toes!**__ A big green worm—with __**rolling **__eyes—crawls in your stomach, and out your eyes! Your stomach turns a __**slimy**__ green, and pus pours out like whipping cream—you spread it on a slice of __**bread,**__ and __**that's**__ what you'll eat when you. Are. __**DEAD!"**_

* * *

><p><em>Way up the road from Hattie's Shack<em>

_Lies a sleepy little Okeechobee town—_

_Talk of swamp witch Hattie lock you in_

_When the sun goes down._

_Rumors of what she'd done,_

_An' rumors of what she'd do—_

_Kept folks off the track of Hattie's Shack,_

_In the back of the Black Bayou._


	2. Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby

**A/N: Hey, guys! For any of you guys reading this, this story was posted a LONG time ago and was intended to be a 2-3 chapter oneshot piece. Unfortunately, I had never posted the third chapter, and final installment, of this piece so I decided that I'd finish the third chapter, touch up the first two chapters, and post it again so the story would be completed and you guys wouldn't be left hanging because I'm lazy and dumb!**

**I am SO sorry for the HUGE gap between the second and third chapter! For anyone who's read the first two before my repost, I'd highly suggest that you read it from the very beginning because even though not much has been changed, mostly grammar and wording, a few things HAVE been added in that you'd probably want to take a gander at! Anywho, on with the show~!**

**I hope you guys enjoy the story, now that the final chapter's been posted! c:**

**Happy reading, happy writing!**

**~The Konfessionist**

* * *

><p><em>One day brought the rain, and the rain stayed on<em>

_And the swamp water overflowed—_

_Mosquitoes and the fever grabbed the town like a fist._

_Doctor Jackson was the first to go._

_Some say the plague was brought by Hattie—_

_There was talk of a hang'n, too,_

_But the talk got shackled by the howls and the cackles_

_From the bowels of the black bayou._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Drip. Drip. Drip.<strong>_

Charon slowly cracked his filmy eyes open, desperately trying not to move at all as a dull ache laced through his spine and rang home in the back of his skull.

_**Drip. Drip. Drip.**_

Something slimy… it was in his eyes, going into his nasal cavity. He turned his head to the side with some difficulty, and it dripped, cold but burning, onto his cheek and then rolled down his face. Whatever was going down his nose settled in his mouth, and he spit it out. It tasted like muddy rainwater.

_**Drip. Drip. Drip.**_

He gave a throaty and miserable groan as he forced himself to roll over, the bed of mud he rested in squelching under his weight as he tried to shift over; turning from his side onto his back. He had to get up—he had to find Emmy.

_**Drip. Drip. Drip.**_

_What's the last thing you remember?..._

His eyes trailed upward to the hole they had fallen through; it loomed above his throbbing head and was covered over in a stratum of thick vines. The vines strangled the sunlight, and where they twisted and writhed over each other did patches of murky sky show through them; it was blacker in his memories, when Emmy ran and Charon tore through the clearing, following pursuit, to try and find her. Now the sky was a creamy grey of a rainy morning, and the rays of sunlight were dulled by thick clouds and a foggy haze typical of Point Lookout. It was no longer raining, but the remnants of the night's harsh downpour dripped down onto him from the bed of vines, pattering onto his face.

_**Drip. Drip. Drip.**_

It travelled through his nasal cavity again, and rolled down his cheek—again cold, but stingingly so. He spat again and growled in annoyance as he carefully sat himself up on an elbow, out of the trajectory of the dripping water, with his eyes tracing the vines. It was undoubtedly the hole he and Emmy had fallen through, but where did the vines _come _from? It'd take _years_ to grow a thatch as thick as that… and what was worse, the hole must have been at _least _twenty feet above his head. He didn't know how he survived a free fall like that with only a sore back and a pounding head as an injury.

The elbow he was leaning into sunk into the mud so he fell back, catching him completely off-guard with his free arm flailing outward to find something to grab onto. He sat up and yanked his limb back out, swatting the thick and slimy muck that dripped from the elbow pad of his leather armor with a grumble on his broken lips. The mud slipped away at an unhurried pace, seeming once more like fat black slugs leaving translucent trails of brown on his armor as they slunk away.

Well, it made sense now… he survived the fall, without so much as a scratch because he landed on something soft—the mud bed.

_Get up you worthless sack of rotting carcass and vomit,_ he shook his head clear of the fog that hung in his mind and he tried to get to his feet, again, with some struggle, as any movement he made resulted in the migraine worsening. He looked around for an exit. _You have to find Emmy._

She obviously wasn't with him, but he found her pack on the ground at his side, half-way sunk into the mud. Crawling over to it, he pulled it free and tore the mouth of it open, digging into it for a bottle of dirty water to ease the ache of his head. When he was finished, he got to his feet with ease and took her backpack with him. Assessing the situation, his employer was missing and possibly injured, his shotgun was also missing so he had nothing but his combat knife, and there were no weapons in Emmy's bag (other than a handful of frag grenades) that he could utilize. As he moved to walk, a sudden glint lashed out at his eyes, and looking around the small area to find it, he followed the glint up to the vine-covered hole where he found his shotgun entwined amongst the vines, stuck.

_If only I could reach it. _He mused as his eyes narrowed in anger and disbelief. _Fucking __**perfect**__._

Charon's eyes widened in alarm when he heard humming. Rapidly turning around, mud squelching under his boot heel to go flying up in flecks, he strained his hearing to make sure that he _was _hearing someone humming (which he was), and to determine where the unnervingly jolly tune was coming from.

"_Emmy?_" He muttered quietly, and took a cautious step forward.

"_I pick and I pick at my eyes, yet I can still __**see!**__ My curse… my insufferable __**curse!**__ Having not only to live, but __**observe**__ this insatiable world…_"

The ghoul immediately stopped and unsheathed his combat knife from the holster on his thigh. That was _not _Emmy.

"_I scratch and I scratch at my wrists, yet I can still __**breathe!**__ My curse… my insufferable __**curse!**__ Why must I live here where babes cry and meat sacks of people writhe and __**ache**__ for a different form?"_

He gripped the handle of his combat knife tightly in his hand as he took another step forward. A foul aroma clung to the air in a putrid stench—a disgusting batter of what smelled like hundreds of different putrid things (and none of them good) that attacked his senses all at once, partnered with the reeking scent of decimated corpses and _other _odors he wasn't familiar with. He gagged, his stomach bearing the brunt of the foul smells, and he took a _far _back step till the air didn't smell as foul and looked around in Emmy's bag for a cloth or something to put over his mouth and exposed nasal cavity. He dealt with the smell of super mutant compounds in the sewers (Emmy was very adventurous), a regurgitated meal from the stomach of a feral ghoul (which was human flesh, in case you were wondering), and he had to deal with the smell of his _own skin _rotting and peeling from his meat and muscle like a baker would peel the ripe ruby skin of an apple for cinnamon-apple pie. He certainly had found himself in situations that smelled worse than the ones he had listed, but he didn't care to remember them and this smell just rang the bell at the top of his mental list. It was practically _unbearable._

"_I dig and I dig at my chest, yet my heart still __**screams!**__ My curse… my insufferable __**fucking **__curse! Why can't I __**die? Why can't I DIE here?**__ Why can't I die? Why can't I die?..."_ The singing, which had turned to unceasing ranting after a while, paused for a moment, and then the woman spoke—almost in a contemplative tone of voice._ "_Why _can't _I die?..." Then she cackled strained laughter, as if she found the question she had asked herself hilarious and amusing.

Charon finally found a cloth and held it up to his nose and over his mouth, cautiously walking forward again as the scratchy voice went back to singing.

"_I pick at your eyes, I scratch at your wrists, I dig at your chest… but you don't __**see,**__ like __**me.**__ But you don't __**breathe**__, like __**me.**__ But you don't ____don't __**scream **__like __**he **__did… _would you still hold me, if I cut off your arms? Would you still walk away, if I cut off your legs? Yes, yes, a delicious idea! Then you will _never _leave again!… Oh, but I'll let you keep your arms—maybe your hands, too, if you're a good babe! Maybe you'll still love me… _maybe?..._ _**Maybe.**_"

Charon spotted light coming up ahead—a crackling torch illuminated the mouth of a long passageway with a low ceiling where shoots of bark pierced downward through the ceiling; it was the roots of trees from above, so maybe they weren't too far beneath the surface. The flames of the torch wavered and flickered, sprawling gruesome shapes and creatures in a dance up the walls of the cavern, _manipulating_ the shadow his tall stature created. Dripping water echoed to him, little things moved and wriggled, the mud squelched and acted hungry, attempting to suck him under…

"_Maybe… _there _is _beauty in pain? Oh, yes. Something divine in fingernails clawing into flesh, the blade penetrating you—all that blood... so divine, and beautiful!..."

And then he heard a low groan. His hearing perked up, finding the pained noise to be familiar to him.

"_Emmy,_" He hissed through clenched teeth and looked back down the low-ceilinged passageway. Inevitable darkness framed the end of the tunnel— but somewhere in that darkness, was Emmy's groaning.

"_Requiem of the damned…_"

Someone was with Emmy, as the singing came from where he heard her groan.

"_Requiem of the unholy— the tainted, and the __**filthy…**_"

It was like someone was singing _to _her—like some sick and manic lullaby.

Charon crouched as low as he could while being able to walk down the passage cautiously. Long sheets of fabric suddenly appeared in front of him over an open entrance, as if the darkness had cleared, and they hung lazily, like dingy curtains on a window. He looked back to see how far he had come, not really _knowing_ what to make of the fact that it was like darkness that departed in front of him had now swallowed the path behind him. He couldn't have walked more than a few feet… why couldn't he see the way back?

He looked back to the curtains; burgundy in color with little holes, as if they had been chewed on by radroaches and other little critters. Dim light streamed through, like the rays of the sun between clouds, casting rings of light on his leather armor and the singing suddenly sounded so much closer.

"_Requiem for all of humanity…_ but maybe humanity does not want to be saved? They certainly do not want to be. They _enjoy _acting like the animals and beasts that we all are deep down inside... too long have we spent confined by what is right and acceptable... flaming skies have set us all _free..._" There was a shift as if someone was walking in the mud—those thick squelching sounds rebounded to him—a low, raspy giggle and another low groan—_it was Emmy groaning._ "Oh, _oh…_" The raspy voice wheezed. "My poor, wounded little sparrow… come to play in my garden to only be frightened by my beautiful creations. You were out of control as you tried to fly away—where you only fell into a great, fat _pit._ Oh, such a shame… such a shame..."

Another low groan from Emmy, as if she were trying to reply but was unable.

"_**Hush now, **__little sparrow…_" The raspy voice sang again. "Would you like for me to sing to you again? _He _didn't seem to like my singing… so I took his tongue if he thought he sounded better. But _you _like my singing, don't you, my darling little sparrow?"

Charon brushed part of the curtain away, just enough to peek past it, to examine the room that lay past it; a small, circular room where the floor was nothing but mud with makeshift wooden planks, aligned side by side, to make a decent platform so your feet wouldn't sink in. To the far wall, opposite of where he hid, was a circular table with tall legs pushed up against the wall. Chipped, dingy bottles of all shapes, colors, and sizes were scattered about on top of it while some lay broken on the floor as if they had rolled off the table and smashed there—leaking out its contents into the cracks between the wooden planks. Above the table were shelves in numerous rows of more bottles and beakers and jars. Charon could almost make out the weighty floating things in them, but not enough where he could identify what the vials held exactly. At the left wall was bedding on the floor, filthy sheets and thin pillows all nestled together as if it were a comfy, padded bird's nest. The sheets shifted, and Charon knew for certain Emmy lay in them. Skeletons hung on each wall, as if they were grotesque ornaments fit to be on display; their arms tied above their heads to the ceiling by fishing wire in awkward angles as if the shoulder joints were broken, their legs tied together and pinned to the wall and the bones were bloodied, battered and cracked with jagged tufts of rotted flesh clung to them. Their jaws were slack or completely missing, but it was the _eyes—_each skeleton still had their _eyes._

A woman was suddenly kneeling over Emmy, brushing her pale brown hair out of her face almost affectionately and a faraway smile came to the woman's thin lips, which looked bruised and swollen and they stuck out on her ashen white skin. The woman got up from the floor, her small nose twitching at the foul air as if it were a pleasant aroma and plucked up a big jar that sat next to the nest of bedding at her side. In it floated two eyes in dark green liquid, the tails of their nerves wriggling with the movements of being picked up so it looked like they were trying to swim. She carried the jar in her hands gently, as if it were her newborn baby, and hummed to herself as she got to her filthy feet and glided to the round table, setting it back down as she went to work. She picked up bottles to pop the cork and sniff at its contents before closing it, putting it back down, picking up another, _sipped_ its contents this time, and then dashed some of it into a chipped bowl in front of her. Her clothing was nothing but long, ragged layers of different cloths that dragged on the floor behind her, the frayed ends crusty with black mud. Her filthy feet had equally filthy bandages wrapped around them as a replacement for shoes, exposing her ingrown and haggard toenails. Her hair was smoky grey and long, almost to her knees, and resembled a rat's nest—greasy and grimy and it had a dull unwashed shine to it, looking like a tangled and dreaded mess that hung down her shoulders and back.

Charon was positive he had never seen anything like her. Or the room that she was in, with the strange jars and the strange—… the ghoul looked up at the skeletons that were hung on the high walls, and his upper lip curled in disgust. _Decoration _was the only word that could come to mind for him. But as he was 'admiring' the decor, all of the skulls on the skeletons suddenly twisted to the side with gnarly sounds of torn ligaments echoing through the room. Their eyes trained upon him, jaw still slack, and he heard a plethora of voices whisper in his right ear as if someone were _right _behind him to whisper.

"_**Found you.**_"

"Hmn? _What was that?_" The woman cried out from her table, snapping her head over her shoulder and brushed her ratty bangs out of her face. Bandaging over her eyes seemed to act as a blindfold, completely sodden with filth that ran murky tracks that were already dried on her pale cheeks. "_Who's there?_"

Charon made no noise as he tensed, simply staring the woman down with his breath withheld in his lungs. His hand tightly gripped the combat knife in his possession, trying to ignore the whispering that had just tickled his ear. It was just coincidence—for when he looked back up to the skeletons, they were no longer looking at him. They were staring at the floor, like they had been the entire time, when he came across the room.

"Hmn? What was that, my dear Monica?" The woman suddenly smiled, and turned to the round table where she had been working. "A visitor, you say? Is that right, my lovely Monica?"

He shifted to the side ever so slightly, leaning his weight more into one foot than the other to get a better view through the curtain's open slit without actually touching it when something moved in his restricted vision, right at the very corner. The jar of eyes, floating in green liquid that the woman had carried with her to the round table… _moved._ Or, to be more specific, one of the eyes floating _in _the liquid seemed to engage in a spazztic attack before writhing in the liquid, convulsing itself into a wide turn to stare _right _back at him. His eyes widened, and he tried to stifle a gasp of surprise—praying that it was just his imagination, like he had convinced himself with the skeletons and the whisper, when the woman suddenly cackled.

"Aha-_**ha!**_" Her laughter broke through the room, as if making a beeline for him past the curtains. "I can see you hiding there, you naughty little _rabbit!_ Nibbling on the delicate flowers in my garden like a little fucking _thief!_ Filthy, dirty, damned _thief!_" She spun around, her swollen lips pulled back in a snarl over her crooked and plaque-encrusted teeth, if but a few were missing. "Don't hide from me, little rabbit! I see you in the doorway of my gardening shed!" She started laughing again—unbridled, maniacal laughter.

Charon remained still, his eyes wide when her hand suddenly lifted up, and a gnarly finger was aimed straight for him.

"Not a little rabbit… no, no, _no—_not _you._ I know what you are, and I see you—_ferryman of __**souls…**_"

The curtains suddenly pulled away with a _swish_ in front of Charon and he stared back and forth at them, straightening up and he directed the blade of his combat knife at her. The drawn back snarl of her lips disappeared and was replaced with a side lopped grin of amusement.

"Ah, there you are, plain as day in front of me." She picked up the jar at the edge of the round table and carried it in front of her body almost lovingly, petting the lid with a gentle caress, and leisurely skulked towards him. The woman made no sudden, angry movements—as if she didn't know his combat knife was unsheathed. He decided she probably didn't due to the filthy bandages covered over her eyes, but just as the thought sprouted forth in his mind did her hand reach out to him, her long and gnarly fingers wrapping around the toothed blade till her knuckles turned white.

"Where is your pole, Charon?" The woman asked sweetly, smiling up at him with her hand still clasped around his blade and the eyes in her jar suddenly convulsed in its sickening fluid and darted upward to stare _directly_ at him. He made no attempt to look back down at them, but instead stared back into the woman's filthy face.

"How do you know my _name?_" He growled at her with narrowed eyes.

"When you _see_ everything…" She pulled her hand back from his combat knife and gestured to the jar of eyeballs in her hands, which were intently watching him, still. "You _know_ everything… now, answer me. Where is your pole, Charon? You cannot travel in your vessel without a pole to direct it with… yet here you are, without your pole and without your vessel, no less, and you expect me to _bend?_" She placed her hand back on his knife blade and began stroking it, cutting her fingers on the teeth till blood saturated his weapon, but she still continued to smile. "This is your payment."

"Payment?" He enquired cautiously.

"If you wish to stay in my gardening shed, I don't want you milling about thinking that you can do as you please," She explained, and the grin on her face faltered ever so slightly. "I've seen people like _you…_ wretched, filthy, _vile_ little parasites that steal the life of anything and all that is pure and innocent… and you say it is your _duty..._ you are Charon! You are not God!"

Charon opened his mouth to speak, but the woman's hand suddenly came up to her lips, revealing her palm to be shredded from how she stroked his knife—the skin dangling in long, coagulated strings of flesh dripping with red jewels and she suddenly brought it to her mouth, smearing the red amongst her already swollen red lips.

"Don't tell me differently. No one can _ever_ tell me differently. Anyone who has tried, has failed. Anyone who has failed, failed because they tried—even _after_ I gave them warning…" She tittered and suddenly skittered away to her round table. "I have given you payment, and I trust you will not misuse my offering or betray my kindness?"

"Kindness?"

"Indeed…" She tilted her chin to her shoulder, nose wrinkled up as if she smelled something foul and she scoffed, turning back to the table in front of her. "I suppose one in this broken world does not know _kindness…_" And she suddenly grinned—one of those annoying, toying, _taunting _grins that made Charon feel like she knew something he didn't, which he wasn't surprised by. She claimed she knew a lot of things. The woman turned her back on him once again and began bandaging her shredded hand with dirty bandages that she picked up from the corner of her table.

The ghoul looked down at his bloodied combat knife and realized that this inane woman probably meant that her blood was some sort of payment, showing him that she would not cause him any harm if he gave her the same sort of courtesy. His senses were on high alarm—this woman was _obviously_ unstable, and he had to retrieve Emmy and _leave _before she got hurt_._ He looked around the room, finding Emmy curled up in a nest of bedding, pillows, and sheets off to the side of the room. The woman must have seen him watching Emmy (even though he didn't know how when her back was facing him) because she suddenly spoke.

"She is yours, isn't she?" The woman asked, almost melancholy in tune—like a banjo missing a few needed strings. She sounded listless and monotonous.

"Incorrect. _I_ am _hers_." He stated, still standing in the curtained entryway of the woman's "garden shed," as she so aptly named her little pit of a mental asylum.

"_It is __**you**__ who is incorrect!_" She suddenly boomed, turning around with a bottle filled with thick, soupy liquid and suddenly heaved it at him from across the room. He simply tilted to the side and evaded it, listening as it smashed into the wall behind him, and its contents came oozing down—looking as if the hardened mud wall was excreting translucent puss. The woman bared her plaque-encrusted teeth again in a snarl and stepped to him, leaving her jar of eyeballs on the round table, pointing a long finger at him. "It is _you_ who owns her, ferryman of the tormented, and those who _lead_ and those who _follow_ eternal damnation you own as _well!_ It is _you_ who owns her, for it is _you_ who protects her! She is _your _possession to keep safe! No man would protect what is not his own!"

The woman suddenly smiled, cocking her head to the side as if she was amused and she turned back to her round table with her back facing him.

"_I saw you up there… trampling through my __**garden…**_" She growled.

"You were the one singing," Charon stated, faintly recalling hearing a woman sing in the clearing of swampland, strung up on their poles.

"Maybe that was me… maybe that _wasn't_ me. But I am not cruel enough to play games with you, so yes, it was me." She nodded her head and her bandaged hand shifted forward as she grabbed something and busied her hands with it. "I saw you trampling through my garden, ferryman… I saw you protecting her… I envisioned you, standing at the foot of my garden shed and you saved her to only collapse into that pit yourself… and why is that? Because she is _yours,_ as I have said before_._ You fell in after her to protect her from the collapse because you will not allow her to leave you, unless you are willing to go in with her—and you are _always_ willing for her, are you not?"

"I was shoved in," He narrowed his milky eyes at her. "…but yes. If she were to die, I would die with her."

"And why is that you follow after her, past the rivers that you yourself travel for the very last time, when you simply weeded out _another _possession when your previous ones shattered and died?" She tapped her long, crooked fingernails on the lid of her jar.

"...I don't know." Charon answered quietly, believing that by "previous possessions" she meant past employers of his. Whenever any of his past employers died, his eyes were dry, his heart thrummed with anger for not ending them himself (Ahzrukhal was an exception), and he quickly found a new employer. But not with Emmy… he decided a long time ago that he would die with her instead of finding someone else to hold his contract. His answer for the woman was honest, he _truly_ didn't know how to respond to her question—it might have been because Emmy was different from his other employers. She was kind and she was generous to a certain degree, she wouldn't take your shit and would deliver heavy consequences on those who deserved it, and by "heavy consequences," Charon referred to himself, of course.

"You will soon."

"What?"

"I said; _you will soon._ You will know soon why you will follow her into the dark, as you refused to do for your past employers. Oh, by the way— did you enjoy my lovely creatures? My little babes… my most _prized_ of all my possessions?" She tilted her chin to her shoulder to speak to him. Her lips were a straight line. "They are _all_ mine, you know."

"They were… fascinating." He stated, not exactly understanding what she meant.

"You did not think that earlier…"

"What do you mean?" He asked tensely, her voice taking on a dangerous twinge of anger.

"You did not think that earlier, when you heaved poor little Monica across the clearing…"

"_Monica?_"

The woman plucked up a dirty, ragged doll from her round table (he realized that was probably what she was busying herself with while speaking with him) and steadily walked towards him, swaying back and forth with every step she took with the mud squelching under the shifting wooden floorboards and her movement reminded him of a pendulum. She held the doll up to him in her outstretched hands—her fingers softly curled into the torso of the doll. One of the arms was gone, causing stuffing to spill out of the stump of cloth; both of the button eyes had been yanked from its face; the mouth was torn open in a grotesque scream; the outfit was a ripped dress in purple print, the dark brown yarn for hair was curled, there was a mole on its cheek and somewhere under the thick layer of swamp mud you could see that a sort of "makeup" had been painted onto various points of the dolls face—such as around where the button eyes had been, on the lips, and rosy blossoms on the cheeks.

The only reason why Charon was able to go through such thorough detail of the doll was because he recognized it—it was _Estelle._ It was Estelle, the fucking doll Emmy found and he had thrown into the brush practically half-way across the fucking swamp.

_How in __**God's **__name—?..._ He wondered with a cramp of anxiety in his stomach, but he made sure his face remained stone cold. The woman claimed she could see everything, despite not having eyes.

He remembered the jar of eyeballs she carried.

…Or so she made it _appear_ that she couldn't see.

"Monica? My dear, _sweet, sweet, __**sweet**_ little Monica…" The woman cooed, softly caressing the doll's mangy and curled hair with her fingers, brushing it out gently. "Tell me. Tell me what he did to you, again."

There was silence in the small room, and she looked down at the doll with a small frown, crackling the dried blood smeared on her lips from when she licked at her injured hand.

"Now, Monica… I know you talk much more than this. Please, speak up," She suddenly grinned, and turned her head to Charon. "So our _guest_ can hear you."

"_**He—**_" A woman's muffled voice, demented and crackled, as if coming over radio waves, echoed in the room—originating from the mass of cotton and yarn in the woman's outstretched hands.

"_Yes?_" She enquired, tucking her thick, dreaded hair behind her ear—revealing that the shell of it was twisted and deformed—and brought it closer to the doll, as if straining to hear her. "He _what?_"

The woman's voice suddenly echoed in a dark, _hateful_ tone.

"_**He—threw me **_**away**_**…**_" Estelle answered as more stuffing dropped from the stump of where her arm once was. "_**He threw me **_**away… **_**into the mud, into the swamp… I was **_**worthless**_** to him…**_" She hissed angrily.

"There, there, my sweet little Monica…" The woman cooed again, tucking the doll to her chest and cradled her like a baby, smiling down at her lovingly as she walked back to her round table with that same, pendulum-like movement in her gait. "_I _will _never_ throw you away… You are _not _worthless to me."

"_**I **_**know**_**…**_" Estelle answered with a taunting giggle as she was put down on the table.

Charon stared with his filmy eyes stretched wide open on his mottled face, his breathing coming in startled inhales and exhales and the cramp of his stomach grew into a hefty pit while his heart crawled up his throat and throbbed in his ear canals like a bass drum playing a quick, rhythmic tune. The woman slowly turned back to Charon and walked towards him, pinching her layers of cloth to keep them from dragging through the mud, although it did not matter much either way. Her hands were on his neck, but she put no pressure. She simply smiled, and he made no attempt to move from her. In fact, he _couldn't_ move. It was like his muscles had contracted into stone amongst his locked up bones.

"The souls of those who roast in eternal damnation eat away at your _own_ flesh as theirs peel away like writhing maggots, dropping off a mutilated corpse... the price you play for trying to play God." She giggled, leaning up to his face so he could smell her thick, rancid breath. "_Poetry…_ is a wonderful thing. Words are a wonderful thing—but it all depends on how you use them. I have words for you, ferryman… would you care to hear them?"

The woman didn't wait for an answer as she moved her hands up to hover over his face—fingertips drawing over his brow muscles, sculpting the contours of his milky eyes, along the rim of his exposed nasal cavity, the creases of his dimples and the heavily cracked remains of his lips and mouth; all in feather-like touches that his exposed flesh and whatever remained of his skin could barely feel. He stared down at her, horrified—and he did not _like_ that feeling. He did not _enjoy_ that feeling… feeling like he knew nothing at all, feeling like he was powerless, feeling like he was weak—and _controlled…_

The ghoul felt like he was weighed down by strings and a crossbar as he lay in the idle hands of a woman infected with insanity and she bore her grin down upon him, threatening to break him if he didn't behave and put on a show like all the other good little puppets did.

She didn't wait for him to respond once again, and simply answered her question—which was obviously directed at him—by telling him the words she wanted to speak, anyways.

"My words spin a proposition for you, ferryman… one that will restore the skin those roasting, rancid bodies have eaten off of you for taking their tormented souls upon your vessel, across the boiling rivers of Styx and Acheron to their homeland… the proposition, I give you, is your _skin…_"

Charon's strings were suddenly snapped loose from its crossbar, and as he tumbled out of the woman's idle hands, her grin grew wider as he fell to the ground and suddenly became animate—his frumpy body painfully growing bones so he could skitter away from her like a radroach when the lights were turned on.

"Wha- _What?..._" He murmured, eyes widening as the stone of his muscles melted away and liquefied his bones. His knees almost buckled out underneath him, and her hands, reaching out to cup his strong jaw, seemed to be the only thing that kept him aloft.

"I see you are familiar with deals… with _contracts…_ the contract that has condemned you to this life of protecting mortals that you do not care for was thrust upon you and you had no choice in the matter, didn't you? Well, I give you a choice _now…_ give me what you cherish most in this world, and I will have your skin returned to you."

"You—" He pulled back out of her hands violently, his yellowed teeth clenched together in a snarl. "You're _lying!_" He exclaimed, suddenly wanting to spit in her face and he _hated _her—she was a crazy bitch who was playing tricks with him.

He fell down that hole and hit his head.

The swamp finally turned him insane, too.

He had eaten a bad punga fruit sprout and was hallucinating.

None of this was real.

He was either dreaming it, imagining it, or hallucinating it.

Either way—none of it was _real…_

It would be the only way to explain how the woman knew his name, knew about his contract and why he protected Emmy—it was because she was a figure of his imagination. _She_ was _he—_that's why she knew _everything_ about him, even though he didn't say a God-damned word!

…Or so he _hoped._

"I am not cruel enough to lie to the ferryman of Hades. Nor am I that stupid." She spoke impassively, hands dropping back to her sides lazily. "I would not lie to you. I have nothing to gain from it."

"You'd get some sort of sick thrill out of it, _wouldn't you?_ You're a God-damned bigot just like the _rest _of them!" He bellowed, pointing at her with a sharp, accusing finger. He was no longer afraid—he was _hateful._ "Fucking with ghouls for a cheap laugh… you talk about _vile people_—who the fuck are _you_ to talk?"

The woman's lips pursed together, almost as if she were thinking hard and she tilted her head to the side—causing the smoky grey dreads tucked behind her deformed ear to tumble off onto her shoulder. Her hand lifted up in a scarily quick movement, her fingers arching up as if her bones had gone jagged and the way her hand molded itself reminded him of the talons of some predatory bird.

The thought was dashed away as he suddenly felt _horrid_ pain lance up his left arm—as if the talons of said predatory bird were digging into his deceased flesh. He screamed out, clasping his tortured hand to his body and he crumpled to his knees, forehead striking the wood panel flooring with a thick _thud_ in the air, and he barely registered the woman slowly skulking towards him over the sound of his pained howls. It felt like his fingertips were being twisted and yanked from their joints and the thin bones in them turned to sharp jutting tacks, protruding through his flesh. His entire forearm felt like it was covered in pitch and lit aflame—and whatever remained of his skin, layers of flesh, and layers of muscle were like blackened sludge slinking off his charred bones. He continued to scream on his knees, head bowed to the floor with his tormented limb curled to his gut and his eyes screwed tightly shut.

But then, the woman's hand lightly came upon his head. The pain suddenly stopped, and the ghoul—terrified to open his eyes—opened them, anyways.

"_Arise_," She demanded sternly. "Become all that you have dreamed about for the last decades of your life…"

Without thinking, Charon slowly got up from his knees to trembling feet. She grabbed at his hand, the one that had experienced the excruciating and agonizing pain and he flinched back, expecting it to go back into a frenzy of fire upon pitch and jutting tacks pushing up through his skin. She managed to grab his hand anyway, catching him by the wrist, and he felt no pain… all he felt was a wave of shock roll from his hand to his gut upon feeling her fingers. A soft underlay of skin with bumps of hardened callouses and miniscule slivers of cuts, and what caused the electrifying shock of her touch was the fact that he could feel it with such an intense _sensation._ When his skin peeled and flaked off, he could still feel when something touched whatever _remained _of his skin, but the sensation would always feel dull, and almost non-existent—like a phantom of a caress that frustrated and teased him to no end. Whatever skin remained had dead nerves that barely registered being touched.

But _this?..._ his skin could _feel!_

Charon did a double take on the thought.

His—… _skin?_

The ghoul looked down at his arm, jaw dropping and milky eyes widening (in shock or disbelief, he didn't know, even though it was probably both) at the sight before him. His _entire_ arm, from fingertips to elbow, was covered in _skin._ Real, warm, supple _skin_ pulled taut over flexing muscles and tendons and joints underneath_._ The skin, _his skin,_ was a healthy peach color and covered in a thin layer of dark hair that threaded down to his thick knuckles and fingers. He flexed his fingers, gazing in awe at the broad fingernails that cupped his plump fingertips. He rolled his fingers into his hand and dug his nails into the butt of his palm, feeling the pain wedge into his skin to make sure that they were real. He opened up his palm and traced all of the little creases and hills with his eyes over and _over_ before the woman spoke up, interrupting his silent—but internally unbridled—joy.

"Ferryman," The woman spoke, "Do you believe me now?"

He fell down that hole and hit his head.

The swamp finally turned him insane, too.

He had eaten a bad punga fruit sprout and was hallucinating.

None of this was real.

He was either dreaming it, imagining it, or hallucinating it.

Either way—none of it was _real…_

It would be the only way to explain how the woman knew his name, knew about his contract and why he protected Emmy—it was because she was a figure of his imagination. _She_ was _he—_that's why she knew _everything_ about him, even though he didn't say a God-damned word!

…He wasn't hoping that anymore. He was hoping that _all_ of it was real.

Charon finally nodded, trying not to let the giant grin go to his face but he couldn't help but release it.

"Yes… _yes!_ I believe you! _I believe you!_"

"Then will you accept my proposition?" She asked keenly, tilting her head to the side and removed her hand from his head.

"…What happens if I don't?" He asked quietly, and the grin disappeared from his face.

"This proposition allows you _option, _but what do you expect if you were to _refuse?_ There would be no disappointment for me, but there will be disappointment for _you. _Your skin will return to those who have eaten it in the first place."

"And if I accept?"

She smiled at this. "If you give me what you cherish most in this world, than I will cover your body in the skin that you once knew, and return to you what other else you have lost." Her eyeballs—which Charon had assumed by now that they were hers, and nothing was behind her blindfold but empty eye sockets—moved in their grimy, green liquid-filled jar. One stared at his missing nose, while the other convulsed and turned up to stare at his missing ears.

A grueling thought that rattled him into a _petrified _state rocked through his very core.

"But what if I—" He began, not quite sure as how to end his question. "But what if I have nothing to give?"

"Every man holds something that they cherish—something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world. So do you accept?"

"…I do." Charon grinned again, even though he honestly didn't know what he possibly had to give her.

"Then I'll do, I'll do, and I'll _do…_" She giggled, turning away to gesture towards Emmy with an outstretched palm. "Take her and go. You have the power to tell her what you have seen in my garden shed, I will not stop you, as you have evidence to prove it to her, but should you attempt to return to me before your end of the proposition has been fulfilled, well… your search will fail. I will only appear to you when you have what I ask for."

"Understood." He nodded his head, still flexing his newly-skinned hand at his side absentmindedly, trying to return to the familiarity of skin. He didn't care if his _entire_ body had to deal with that excruciating pain once more—it was damn well _worth _every inch of skin, hair, and cartilage that would be returned to him.

"Then leave," She waved him off as she warily returned to her round table of jars, beakers, and bottles of grotesque things floating in thick liquids. She came back with his combat shotgun in her hands and handed it to him, and with wide eyes, he took it and strapped it to his back where it belonged. Charon then turned to Emmy and plucked her up from her nestled bedding, his mottled hand wrapped under her shoulders with his gifted hand wrapped under the crook of her legs—causing the skin upon skin friction to well up familiarity and longing of a woman's one-and-only touch in his gut. He ignored it and turned to the only exit of the room, stopping when sunlight filtered through it. He looked back at the woman in question, and she simply smiled at him.

"Be careful, ferryman of Hades… things get sucked into the bog, you know… you never know what's down there. _And watch where you step—_as I am _everywhere—_and I've got my eye on you. I've got a _thousand _eyes on you…"

Charon suddenly remembered the dolls in the clearing; the horde of little red markers that appeared all around them on Emmy's Pip-Boy map like a swarm of angry bees and he cringed, having also remembered what the woman said.

"_Oh, by the way— did you enjoy my lovely creatures? My little babes… my most __**prized**__ of all my possessions? They are __**all **__mine, you know."_

He forced himself out into the sunlight, ignoring the glaring button eyes of the dolls that surrounded him as they watched him walk away from the woman's domain—a mouth of a cave, that seemed to be molded from the stubborn muck at the very bottom of the swamp bogs, jut out above the clearing of muck in the middle of a field of dolls strung up on poles in clusters, swinging lazily in the breeze. The warmth of the sun on his skinned arm, for the first time in a _very _long time, was a welcomed sensation that made him forget that the dolls were watching him.

"_I've got a __**thousand**__ eyes on you…"_

Charon ran from the clearing with Emmy in his arms, her backpack bouncing on his backside and his arm absorbing the sunlight greedily as the woman's cackling laughter chased him from the swamp, and the wind and fog carried her singing to him even when he was far, far away from her "garden shed" and he had returned down to the abandoned motel where he and Emmy stayed by the carnival grounds. It was almost like she was in his _head._

But, again, he did not mind—for he barely noticed the woman's singing at all as he continued to enjoy the skin of his forearm.

"_Go to sleep you little baby... __**go to sleep you little baby... **__your momma's gone away, and your daddy's gonna stay—didn't leave nobody but the baby… Go to sleep you little baby... __**go to sleep you little baby...**__ everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn—didn't leave nobody but the baby… you're a sweet little baby... __**you're a sweet little baby... **__honey and the rock and the sugar don't stop—gonna bring that bottle to the baby… don't you weep pretty baby... __**don't you weep pretty baby... **__she's long gone with her red shoes on—gonna need another lovin' baby… go to sleep you little baby... __**go to sleep you little baby... **__you and me and the devil makes __**three—**__don't need no other lovin' baby... go to sleep you little baby... __**go to sleep you little baby... **__come and lay your bones, on the alabaster stones—and be my ever lovin' __**ba—... by…**__"_

* * *

><p><em>Early one morn, 'tween dark and dawn<em>

_When shadows filled the sky—_

_There came an unseen caller_

_On a town where hope run dry._

_In the square there was found, a big black round_

_vat full of gurgling brew._

_Whispering sounds, as the folk gathered 'round,_

"_**It came from the Black Bayou…"**_


	3. Swamp Witch

**A/N: Hey, guys! For any of you guys reading this, this story was posted a LONG time ago and was intended to be a 2-3 chapter oneshot piece. Unfortunately, I had never posted the third chapter, and final installment, of this piece so I decided that I'd finish the third chapter, touch up the first two chapters, and post it again so the story would be completed and you guys wouldn't be left hanging because I'm lazy and dumb!**

**I am SO sorry for the HUGE gap between the second and third chapter! For anyone who's read the first two before my repost, I'd highly suggest that you read it from the very beginning because even though not much has been changed, mostly grammar and wording, a few things HAVE been added in that you'd probably want to take a gander at!**

**Before I forget, the songs used were "The Hearse Song"/"You May Be Next" which was used in the first chapter at the end, "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" in chapter two which was featured in the movie ****O Brother, Where Art Thou?****, and the song which is seen at the beginning and end of all the chapters is called "Swamp Witch" by Jim Stafford. **

**Anywho, on with the show~!**

**I hope you guys have enjoyed the story in its entirety! For those who do not understand what happens here in the fourth chapter, an explanation will be posted at the bottom of this chapter in a second Author's Note!**

**Happy reading, happy writing!**

**~The Konfessionist**

* * *

><p><em>There ain't much pride when you're trapped inside<em>

_A slowly sink'n ship—_

_Scooped up the liquid, deep and green,_

_And the whole town took a sip._

_Fever went away, and the very next day,_

_The skies again were blue—_

_Let's thank old Hattie for sav'n our town,_

_We'll fetch her from the Black Bayou._

* * *

><p>Charon tugged at the wrapping that covered his newly skinned arm, gritting his teeth at the itch that shot up from his enveloped fingertips to his elbow. The dingy material chaffed and rubbed against him the wrong way, causing him to scratch and rub to all his heart's content. Of course, it didn't irritate him—it happily reminded him that he had skin that <em>could<em> become irritable and, thus, itch. Emmy gave a throaty snore in her sleep and rolled over in her bed so her back faced him; the dimples of her curves illuminated in the soft glow of the lantern he had lit on the bedside table. He reached over and grasped the knob between his forefinger and thumb and ceased the flickering flame, almost smiling as the shape of the circular bit of metal molded into his fleshy fingertips, like a sculptor's tools molding the beautiful clay of its masterpiece.

The smile on his face disappeared when he looked at his employer, and the irritation on his new skin calmed itself and turned sweaty under the leather attachment he had added to his armor sleeve so it covered his skinned arm completely and it gloved over his hand completely—but it proved to be so prickly and tight, and he _hated _it. He hated the fact that it was a necessity.

_Even with skin, I still have to hide…_

He clenched his fist on his knee, tightening it before releasing it, and he looked down to the new leather cuff piece once again; the buffed splotches and thin scrapes looking more pronounced now that he had dimmed their motel room's only source of light. He didn't want to hide his beautiful new skin—he wanted to expose it to the light; the wind; the sun… but he didn't wish for Emmy to wake up and see it, and then frantically question how he had managed to gain back skin and hair on his forearm and sturdy fingernails. He wouldn't know how to explain it to her, and quite frankly, he didn't _want _to.

"_Every man holds something that they cherish—something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world."_

_She said every __**man…**__ do I even qualify as that anymore?_ His hand relaxed on his knee again, fingers sprawling out over the cap and he thrummed them against the thick leather pad as he thought about the swamp woman's words.

"_Every man holds something that they cherish—something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world."_

_**Am I **__a man?_ Charon asked himself frankly before leaning forward in his seat, elbows on his knees with his hands clasped together in front of him. _What do I have to give that woman? Is she even a woman? Is she even __**human? **__What the hell __**is**__ she to be able to do—…_ He flexed his fingers upon his knee, feeling the throb of leather against his skin and it thrummed up to his palm like an electric shock. _…what the hell is she that she's able to do __**this?**_

The ghoul quietly growled; a desperate and pathetic sound that came out more as a whimper and he closed his eyes, pressing his fingertips into his eyelids and no sensation registered in the dead nerves of his skin and flesh. He had to tighten his other fist, his skinned one, to get that pleasure of sensation and it sent a welcomed shiver that wrung around his spine in coils and rings from the base of his tailbone all the way up to the clicking synapses of his over-thinking brain. A certain sense of sickened excitement wormed around in his gut, and he didn't know whether to vomit or close his eyes and will himself into unconsciousness until the feeling had passed.

_Alright, you __**gotta **__work this out if you want it to make __**any **__sense! _He finalized with a nod of his head, as if it were the first step on his road to becoming a fully-skinned being again. Maybe it was. It _should _have been._ If that woman didn't think I had anything to give, she wouldn't have brought up this deal, right?_

"_Be careful, ferryman of Hades… things get sucked into the bog, you know… you never know what's down there. __**And watch where you step—**__as I am __**everywhere—**__and I've got my eye on you. I've got a __**thousand **__eyes on you…"_

He snapped his eyes open. It was hard to think clearly when he _felt _like a thousand eyes were watching him at that moment. It was hard to keep his concentration on the issue at hand, this _test_ at hand, when you felt like someone was looking over your shoulder to steal your answers. Of course, he knew how paranoid it sounded—how paranoid _he _was sounding—but when a mysterious and insane stranger seems to carry immense abilities and power (he didn't know how else to _describe_ what she had done to his arm), you have every right to be paranoid! So he couldn't help but stand up, cautiously amble towards the window, and peel back the filthy lace of the thick curtain to peer out. He knew the woman's dolls weren't going to be outside, as they were deep into the swamp and _very _far away from their temporary residence at the Homestead Motel—but he found the dolls being there and undoubtedly watching him wasn't what terrified him. No, what terrified him _more _than those bits of stuffing and thread was that the woman _herself_ would be there; petting her glass jar with the two eyes floating in it like wriggling worms, smiling from ear to deformed ear, humming a melancholy tune that would frighten those who were not so easily, if at all, able to _be _frightened. He feared the unnamed woman because of her power, her essence, and the fact that her mental state was something to be _heavily _questioned and not give risk to being ignored.

Charon almost startled himself when he found that the reason he feared this woman wasn't because he was worried that she would hurt him, but he feared her because he was petrified that she would hurt his employer, _Emmy._

Thunder clapped outside, ripping through the room in a slash of blinding light and the woman's voice seemed to boom in an echo around him. The ghoul cringed, curling up into himself, as he took a hold of his head in his hands and clenched his eyes shut as tightly as he could as he rose up from his chair.

"_It is __**you**__ who is incorrect!"_

He spun around on his heel, rapidly drawing his combat knife with his eyes crisscrossing through the darkness as his breathing came in panicked pants of quivering, hot air.

"_It is __**you**__ who owns her, ferryman of the tormented, and those who __**lead**__ and those who __**follow**__ eternal damnation you own as __**well!**__"_

Heavy rain pounded against the glass of the window behind him; casting fat droplets of tears against the wooden panes.

"_It is __**you**__ who owns her, for it is __**you**__ who protects her!"_

Thunder clapped once again, followed by another slash of lightning through the lace curtains and the window slammed open with the shutters clattering around on the outside, barely being kept on their hinges. The lantern on Emmy's bedside table flickered out as the merciless wind gusted in, knocking light things over and whipping up the bed sheets that rested on Emmy's body, causing her to shiver in her sleep.

"_She is __**your**__ possession to keep safe!"_

As the window's shutters slammed repeatedly against the outer walls of their motel room, Charon hesitantly sheathed his combat knife on his hip and turned to close the window. Once the latch was in place and the window was closed, he returned to Emmy's bed to grab the matchbox next to the lantern when a hand latched onto his from out of the darkness. He grit his teeth to keep from inhaling sharply in surprise with his eyes darting up into the surrounding blackness. He expected the woman's face to suddenly appear and grin at him grotesquely.

Then, he saw it; dreaded grey hair, plaque-encrusted teeth, thin bruised lips, jutting cheekbones, discolored skin dull in the dim light—

"_Charon?_"

And just like that; the swamp woman's face was gone and replaced with Emmy's face—sleepy blue eyes, light brown hair that hung limply around the contours of her rounded face, thin lips twisted up into a weak smile, small nose, light freckles dusted over the apples of her cheeks, the small birth mark on the right side of her temple right above the tail of her eyebrow.

It was Emmy, his employer. His sweet, sweet Emmy.

"E- Emmy…" He murmured, and her hand released its grip from his wrist. He quietly exhaled the breath that he had been holding and turned to the lantern, opening the hatch to relight the wick before closing it up and turning up the knob so the little bounding flame turned brighter, casting everything in a soft golden glow.

"You okay?" She asked sleepily and yawned, rubbing at her tired eyes. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"…I'm alright." He answered her quietly, looking up at her.

"What—... What _happened_ to us?" Emmy asked quietly, sitting up in her bed and looked around the room. "Are we… back at the motel?" She looked to him curiously, tilting her head to the side.

"Yes." Charon nodded. While his employer had slept, he mulled over many different scenarios and excuses that his mind had cooked up to offer her on a silver platter; a simple way to explain what had happened to her.

"How'd we get back here? I—weren't we in that _field?_ With all the dolls, and that—that fucking _singing…_" Her trembling hands tightened in her lap, fisting the dirty sheets. "It was raining, and—and _dark,_ and my Pip-Boy wasn't working—!" Her ranting paused and she hugged her knees to her chest, encircling her arms around them and she looked up at him helplessly. "What happened back there, Charon?..."

"_You have the power to tell her what you have seen in my garden shed, I will not stop you, as you have evidence to prove it to her, but should you attempt to return to me before your end of the proposition has been fulfilled, well… your search will fail."_

"…I don't know what you're talking about." He lied.

She snapped her head up, tired eyes no longer tired and she stared at him with a hardened look; as if she believed that she hadn't heard him right.

"…_What?"_

"I said; _"I don't know what you're talking about._" He sat on his chair and leaned back into it, folding his arms over his chest. "It was dark, sure, and it was starting to rain a little. I said we had to get back to the hotel, and you began acting strangely."

"I—… _**what?**_"

"You were looking around in a panic, claiming that the _dolls_ were watching you before you ran off. I chased after you, and once I caught up you just went unconscious. I took you back to the motel. I figured you had eaten some bad punga."

"I… bad—bad _punga?_" She exhoed, finding it hard to believe. "So I was just _hallucinating?..._ I was—… I was _dreaming?_"

"Seems like it." He nodded. "Panada claimed that consuming a bad punga fruit is similar to radiation poisoning, oddly enough, considering it rids you _of_ radiation. One is plagued with flu-like symptoms, and occasionally one can experience hallucinations."

"But… what I _saw—_what _we _saw!" Emmy insisted, rolling over on the bed so she was on her knees in front of him. "That _wasn't_ a hallucination! I _know_ it wasn't! It—It was so _real…_" She sat back on her crossed ankles and looked at her palm, tracing it over with a light fingertip. "Charon… I remember falling down a hole. I remember screaming for you, and when you grabbed my hand—the _look_ in your eyes…"

Her voice had trailed off, and for a second Charon felt guilt sheath it's long, ugly blade into his heart for coming up with such an outrageous lie to his employer. But how much crazier would it have sounded if he told her he had encountered a being with unearthly powers that managed to return to him the one thing he had sorely missed for _decades_ now? Would she not have believed him? Would she have believed that maybe all the radiation from the obnoxious gas pockets in the swamp had gotten to him, and he was slowly but surely on his way to becoming feral even though his arm could be enough evidence?

Maybe he _was _feral… maybe he had been hallucinating everything as well—but even so, it wouldn't explain why Emmy had the _exact _same hallucination. It wouldn't explain why his forearm, hand, and fingers were now covered with skin; complete with dark hair and fingernails.

None of it made sense, and quite frankly, he didn't _want _it to. He preferred it _better _this way. He knew she wasn't the only one he was lying to; he was lying to _himself_ as well—trying to trick his mind into believing that lying to Emmy like this was the best thing for her. Better for her to think it's not real than tell her all that (and much more) really _did _happen. She would be safer that way… they _both _would be.

"Emmy, maybe you should rest a bit more." Charon suggested, taking her shoulder to push her back to bed but she grabbed his hand and looked up into his eyes. He swallowed his swelling tongue as it dried out in his mouth.

"Charon, you were _terrified._ That look in your eyes—… I don't know what the fuck happened, but what I know is that you were _scared._ I have never seen you _that_ scared, if I _ever_ did see you scared!" Her eyes broke away from his, and she stared at a dark splatter on the wall. "I—I think that's what scared me the most… because if you were scared, then that meant I wasn't getting out of that hole _alive…_"

The ghoul finally managed to force his tongue back up into his mouth as he got up and sat on the edge of her bed. He refitted the sheets and pulled them up over her legs so it covered her again, pushing her down to the bed and she willingly complied this time.

"Emmy, you're fine—_we're fine—_and you're alive. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"I know…" She murmured, giving him a weak smile as her head hit the pillow, sprawling out her nest of hair around the crown of her head. "You've always got my back, Charon."

"I know that you do, Emmy." He shot back, looking to her as he went to the window to pull the curtains closed to keep the foggy morning light from entering the room. Behind him, he heard rustling sheets as Emmy sat up in her bed.

"And you know that I've got your back, too… right, Charon?" Emmy asked quietly, and he could hear the quaint smile in her voice.

Charon gripped the curtains tightly in his hands as he yanked them quickly shut and glanced back at her over his shoulder. She smiled more and gestured for him to come to her with a curl of her fingers. He followed her gesture and came to her bedside, where she took his skinned hand and squeezed it. The immediate pressure of her touch coursed a wave of sensation straight up his arm to his heart, where it immediately stopped beating. Emmy had done this with him before—childishly pulling him down to her level, squeezing his hand in a feather-like touch as if he were delicate, and uttered several words of affection before returning to what she was doing. It was the little things like this that made them so close to one another; she gave him love that was _more_ than just a friend or a lover or a sibling, or an employer. It was love that he didn't have to ask for, and it was love that he didn't necessarily earn; it was just there, and it was unconditional.

Sometimes, as her bodyguard and confidante, he felt that he sometimes fell short in that aspect… he didn't quite know how to give unconditional love. He knew how to give unconditional loyalty, sure—but _love?_ It had left a bad taste in his mouth from the first time he heard the word.

"I'm glad that it was just bad punga…" She began as her wide smile kept to her lips. She tucked her hair behind her ear before continuing, with her hand still on his with her fingers curling around his own as their grips intertwined with one another. There was the unconditional love—that spark in her eyes, but this time, it was _destroying_ him. "I don't know what I would do if I had lost you, Charon."

"…Get some more rest, Emmy… you had a long night, and we still have some ground to cover in the swamps." He muttered to her quietly as he laid her back against the bed with their hands still together between their bodies. "I'll be here when you awake."

His words made her grin as she closed her eyes and slowly released her grip from his hand so she could curl up against her pillow. "I know… you _always _are…" She murmured as she promptly fell back asleep.

Charon stood completely still at the edge of the bed—motionless, no breathing, making sure that his heart calmed to a beat that was so steady and tedious that it could have stopped abruptly right there—even long after he knew Emmy had returned back to deep sleep. He slowly padded backwards till the back of his knees hit the edge of the closest chair and he collapsed back into it, clutching his head in his hands and he clenched his eyes tightly shut with his palms roughly grinding in frustration back and forth over his peeling face. It was a form of torture he placed upon himself—it was like it stirred up the radiation he had absorbed that turned him into the monster that he was, and it caused searing flashes of agonizing pain to dance over his features (or what was left of them in his face).

He stopped his punishment long enough to peek through his fingers to Emmy in utter sorrow as his shoulders began to tremble.

"_I don't know what I would do if I had lost you, Charon."_

He clenched his eyes tightly shut again and twisted his face away as he moved his hands to his lap and dug his fingernail-less tips into the tops of his thighs; slowly raking them up and then back down to start again and he began to rock in his chair almost crazily. The pain usually kept him calm—the feral _need _to dig into his own flesh reminded him that he wasn't legitimately _feral _yet because he didn't crave to tear into others. He snapped his eyes open and stared at Emmy as only dark emotions plagued him. The reason why her words (_"I don't know what I would do if I had lost you, Charon."_) had murdered him so because as she spoke, a single familiar voice began to shout horrible things at him all at once in the front of his mind. It was all things that he heard before… but now? He was forced to listen to them as if it were a madman's cacophony.

"_Every man holds something that they cherish—"_

"_Be careful, ferryman of Hades…"_

"_something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world."_

"_It is __**you**__ who is incorrect!"_

"—_as I am __**everywhere—**__"_

"_It is __**you**__ who owns her,"_

"_I've got a __**thousand**__ eyes on you…"_

"_for it is __**you**__ who protects her!"_

"_I've got a __**thousand**__ eyes on you…"_

"_She is __**your**__ possession to keep safe!"_

_**Athousand eyes**_

"_She is __**your**__ possession to keep safe!"_

_your possession_

_**your **__possession_

_**your possession**_

_**YOURYOURYOURYOURYOURYOUR**_

"_ferryman of the tormented,"_

_**POSSESSIONPOSSESSIONPOSSESSIONPOSSESSIONPOSSESSION POSSESSION**_

"_I will only appear to you when you have what I ask for._"

The cruel swamp demoness cackled in the room of his brain—echoing off the walls as a shrill, dry, _mocking _laughter… and Charon began to sob into his hands, because he finally knew; _this _was what it was like to make the metamorphosis from a sane man to a madman…

_**This**__ is what it's like to turn __**feral.**_

* * *

><p>Emmy had slept for the next day after Charon coaxed her into falling back asleep. All he did was watch her breathe and her eyelids twitch as he sat in his corner of the room at her bedside; where he alternated between sobbing while holding his head in his hands and checking over their supplies and cleaning his gun on autopilot as he continued to watch his employer sleep. Once she had arisen, all sleepy-eyed and tangled hair, he excused himself outside to recollect his thoughts and calm his torrent of emotions (made up an excuse to her of hearing dogs outside earlier and he wanted to see if they were still around), and came back inside to finish getting ready for the new day with her. He watched her as she brushed her hair and washed her face and further groomed herself, and his gut churned and his head ached; and time and time again when he was close to the edge of taking his shotgun and blasting his own brains out from the dark and frightening thoughts that plagued him, did she smile at him, and he relaxed enough where the thoughts of committing suicide had passed.<p>

"I noticed you added some stuff to your armor," She mentioned as she tugged her own armor on and clasped the buckles up her sides, and it turned his attention from his daily weapon cleaning and repair to turn to her. "On the sleeve, there."

Charon couldn't help but tense up slightly (glad that Emmy didn't notice because her expression didn't change) as he turned back to continue cleaning his shotgun in his usual perch in the corner.

"Got a bit scraped up when I was carrying you back to the motel… I thought it would be wise to fortify my armor in exposed regions to keep from losing any more parts of me." He explained smoothly as he went back to cleaning his weapon.

She frowned slightly and stepped towards him as she pulled her hair up and back out of her eyes to tie it up in a messy ponytail. Tendrils of straight hair framed the sides of her face.

"It's nothing too serious, is it?" She asked worriedly, finishing up her ponytail and put her hands on her hips.

"Not at all. I just figured I would take care of the problem before it had the chance of becoming one." He said as he finished cleaning down his gun and began putting it back together.

Emmy shrugged and went back to preparing to set out for the day, and they didn't talk again until they were about to leave and she tugged on her arm to stop him.

"Charon…?" She called for him while biting her lip nervously. He looked back at her and waited for her to continue, and she did so with a sigh, as if she wished she hadn't asked for his attention in the first place. "I—…I don't know if I'm ready to go back outside, yet…"

"Why not?" He asked as he fully turned his body around to face her. "You said that we have work that needs to be done, and we need to get back out into the swamp as soon as possible."

"I know, I _know…_ but I—…" She sighed again. "Well, I really _don't _know… all morning, it feels like I haven't been able to think straight… it feels like—like… I don't know, Charon. I just don't know."

"What do you mean?"

"There's just… look, don't make fun of me when I say this, okay? But there's been these—_pictures,_ going through my head. Like if you took one of those old black-and-white movies we found about space at the Museum of Technology and chopped it up into split-second pictures and little clips. That's what it feels like in my head right now. It feels like my head's a theatre and I can't stop it."

"I—I don't quite understand you…" He trailed off, truly _not_ knowing what she meant, but he also began to feel fear threading itself through his veins and arteries and into his heart to circulate back out to the rest of his body.

"I see _dolls…_ well, not _tons_ of dolls, just _one_ doll. That doll that I found—the one I named Estelle. I see her in my hand, smiling up at me, and then the next minute she's in your hand—and then she's flying through the air." Emmy swallowed hard, pausing for a moment before continuing. "But I—… I remember that from the clearing. Something… something _really_ fucking weird happened, and I told you to get rid of her. I remember it getting dark, and it was raining, and there's nothing in front of me but black when the ground seemed to disappear under my feet—_really_, it did—like it just _opened up_ and I was falling, screaming for you… and you were suddenly there. Holding me. Then we were falling together… I remember—well, I don't know if I _remember…_ She just keeps showing up in my head."

"_**She?**_" Charon asked, his tongue shriveling up in his mouth to tumble back into his constricting throat. "You mean that doll?" He asked hopefully.

His employer shook her head and looked up at him. "No. I keep seeing a woman. Throwing me over her shoulder, taking me somewhere, petting my hair… singing to me… but every time I try to see her face, I—… I just can't… she keeps turning away, like she doesn't want me to look at her. Then she starts singing again, but sadly this time… I think I asked her what her name was."

"What did she say?" He asked.

"This—… this is the part that scares me… this is where it gets creepy. Er—creep_ier._" She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked up to him with her bangs falling into her eyes. "So I guess the fact that it's a hallucination makes sense… I mean, what she told me was—… well, what she told me, she couldn't have known unless we met before, and I'm sure we haven't…"

"What did she say to you, Emmy?" Charon asked, frowning more and more as she continued explaining the things she saw in her head. Emmy took a deep inhale, as if she were about to embark on a long and tedious story, and then spoke.

"_I am Alpha, and Omega. I am the beginning, and the end._"

The familiar passage made the ghoul's milky eyes widen. "Your mother's biblical passage..."

She nodded. "Yeah, but she didn't say the rest of it. She said something _else_ in this really weird voice… I don't know, like she was making fun of me, or something."

"Well then, _go on._" He ushered her impatiently, but she didn't seem to notice. The fear that wrung through him was intensifying the more details he received, and he didn't like it. He knew that this wasn't some dream or hallucination that Emmy was having—the swamp woman had a knack for knowing things about you even if you had never met her before. She proved that to him very well.

"I can't remember most of what she said… it's really hazy."

"What _do _you remember?"

"Something about a bird, and death, and not being able to keep her mouth shut… then she started talking about songs or music or something. Then she talked _more_ about death… _although_…"

"What? Although _what?_" Charon asked her impatiently again.

"I—... Charon…" She looked up at him, chewing on her bottom lip nervously and he gripped her shoulders gently to let her know that it was alright.

"It's alright, Emmy… you can tell me."

"What's a—… a _ferryman?_"

Emmy shrieked and Charon instinctively slung his combat shotgun off his shoulder and readied it when the window slammed open suddenly, and lightning cackled in the distant planes of Point Lookout and the slanted rain began to pound the side of the motel and the wind caused the curtains to flail and dance ominously. As the ghoul scurried up to close the window tightly shut, there was a hitch in his step when he could have sworn that with the lightning and the rain and the wind was the barking and maniacal laughter of the woman from the swamp.

* * *

><p>Charon growled at the morning sun that flittered dully through his tightened eyelids as he stepped out onto the front step of the motel room. He pressed his fingers to his eyes, then let his digits roam down the side of his face to rub the back of his neck and he finally opened his lids, looking out onto the small and broken civilization that docked the carnival pier. The sun barely pierced through the thick clouds that hung above, and the air was drowsy, warm, and suffocating. A thin mask of green swamp gas hung over the soft ground and cracked roads and sidewalks. He looked to the grove of trees where, beyond that, did the swamp lay to any and all who dared to enter it. It was the day after the sudden storm that emerged upon that part of Maryland when the two had packed to leave, and they—fortunately and <em>un<em>fortunately in their own rights—were cooped up inside until it had passed that morning. They ate, talked about a game plan on what to do when the storm was over, slept, and the pictures Emmy saw in her head weren't mentioned at all after he explained to her that a ferryman was someone who operates a boat or some other sea-worthy vessel. Like Tobar.

"_What's a—… a __**ferryman?**_"

The ghoul closed his eyes again and heaved a drawling and pathetic sigh before turning back to look through the open doorway of the motel. He saw Emmy sitting on the edge of the filthy bed, her knees hugged to her chest so she could tie up the laces of her boots. Her eyes carried a vague sense of awareness, as if she were deeper in thought than should be allowed. She heaved a pathetic sigh of her own, and when she looked up at him, a feeble smile came upon her thin lips.

"You sure you want to do this?" He asked her hoarsely as he made his way to the bed. His employer bowed her head, as if unsure. "We don't have to."

"But I promised Catherine…" She murmured, and then her eyes met his. "I promised that I'd bring her daughter back, and Nadine's in the cathedral with those Tribals. I can _feel _it. I have to get to the Mother Punga out in the swamp."

"That brat can wait," He hissed and knelt down on one knee in front of her. "My concern is for you. If you are not ready to enter the swamp then we don't have to."

"I'm going to have to eventually," She furrowed her brows together and her thin lips pulled back into a long frown. "What? Do you just expect me to run away? Do you expect _us_ to go back to the Wasteland with _nothing_ for Catherine?"

Charon looked back to the open door of their motel room with his cracked lips pursed together tightly in thought. He did not want to have Emmy endure the swamp any longer, but he knew that she was right all the same—they would have to go back eventually. Damned if it was to find Nadine, or because he wanted to look for that crazy _bitch_ and her "garden shed."

"_But should you attempt to return to me before your end of the proposition has been fulfilled, well… your search will fail. I will only appear to you when you have what I ask for."_

Somehow and somewhere, deep in his churning gut, he knew that the woman's words were right. He had a feeling that if he ever _did_ try to find her, his search would be fruitless. Even so, he didn't _want_ to go looking for her so soon—not when he didn't even know what it was that he should give to her in order to regain his skin and dispose of the mottled tissue and muscle that barely covered his bones. He was tired of living so long in this withered body—no, this withered carcass—and he couldn't consider this living at all; he was just _surviving_ in a cage of putrid and decaying flesh that he wished to escape from. Hell, everyone out in the Wasteland was trying to survive, but he was a fucking _ghoul_ for Christ's sakes. A _zombie,_ and although the Wasteland critters (like yao guai and mole rats) didn't care about where their next meal was coming from, Wastelanders and Raiders and everybody else that could be catalogued in the 'in-between' weren't afraid to poke at him with a sharp stick just for shits and giggles because he _was_ unfortunate. He _was _worse off than the rest of them and that's what _made_ the Wastelanders and the Raiders and everybody that could be catalogued in the 'in-between' want to fuck with him because it reminded them that "_hey, my life ain't so bad—at least I ain't a fucking shuffler._"

_I miss being human…_ He thought sadly, when a hand suddenly clapped down on his shoulder, and he looked up into Emmy's face. She was smiling at him—_really _smiling at him. It was small, but it was there, it was honest, and most importantly it was _happy._

"I'll be fine—really. The moment we find Nadine, we'll leave and we'll _never_ come back here."

"What about Desmond?" Charon questioned.

"He's an ass and I've got a bad feeling about him... he's going to either give us trouble or get us _into _trouble." She spoke as she got up from the bed. The springs squeaked as they were released from the weight that was placed upon them. "So once Nadine's found, we'll go back to D.C. and never set foot back in Point Lookout."

"Then finish taking what we need and let's go." He sighed as he got up as well and ambled towards the doorway to stand in the dull sunlight easing through the thick swamp clouds. He looked back at Emmy momentarily to watch her pack, when a scratchy voice echoed in the back of his mind.

"_Every man holds something that they cherish—something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world."_

_Then what is this thing that __**I **__cherish?... _His vision suddenly blurred and he blinked energetically before closing his lids finally and rubbing his fingertips into them, massaging his eyes. A thick gust of wind bothered the dead strands of hair on the crown of his head, and when he removed his hand from his face and looked up, he could have sworn that he saw movement in the fog—a figure nearing the town. He grabbed his combat shotgun from his back and strained his eyes, trying to see the figure clearer. Whoever it was suddenly stopped, as if he (or maybe she, he couldn't tell) knew that they were spotted.

Charon's vision blurred again and he swayed in place as if he were suddenly dizzy. He held his head to keep it from swimming any further, he tottered into the doorway and slammed into it with a heavy thud, and his combat shotgun dropped to his side. He groaned audibly at how lightheaded he was suddenly feeling.

"Charon, are you all right?" Emmy came up behind him and gripped his elbow. "Charon?"

The ghoul opened his eyes, looking up in the direction of the figure to find whoever it was (he felt—no, he _knew_ that it was that swamp woman standing there) still standing in the fog, unwavering. He growled angrily, yellowed teeth bared and crusty skin twisted up between his furrowed brows, he lifted his combat shotgun and took off into the fog after her.

"Ch- _Charon!_" Emmy yelled after him, startled that he had suddenly taken off. She strode out onto the front doorstep, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and watched him run away.

He continued to run through the fog with his combat shotgun armed and at the ready as he made a beeline for the still figure. It was that woman, he _knew_ it had to be—she was there to fuck with him! What had he done, playing with things he didn't understand because it offered him something he always wanted since he lost it? Being completely human again dazzled in his eyes like a fantastic dream that was so close to becoming reality, and he allowed himself to be ensnared within this game. He was too deep in now to pull back… but did he truly want to? Would he _ever_ want to abandon the only chance he would have of having skin once again? He shrugged the thought away and let his anger consume him completely, drowning out his thoughts and suffocating his lungs into heavy pants as he finally came up behind the woman and seized her shoulder, throwing her onto her back in the dirt and he stood over her, pointing the shotgun at her head.

"_Don't __**you**__ follow me,_" He growled.

"Charon!" Emmy cried as she finally reached him and stopped at the woman that was on the ground. "Charon what's _wrong _with you, taking off like that? You're supposed to stay with me!"

He didn't even bother looking at his employer as he knelt down and grabbed the woman by her ratty shawl, which had been thrown over her head when he shoved her to the ground. "On your feet," He demanded.

"What are you _doing?_" She exclaimed, hands on her hips and watched with pursed lips as he pulled the shawl up. Her eyes widened and her jaw went almost unhinged as it popped open. She took a wide step back. "_Ch- Charon…_"

_This—This isn't…_ He thought with his own eyes widening as he let the heap of cloth drop from his hand and onto the ground.

A figure had been made out of bound branch and bone into the shape of a hunched human. A cracked skull was the headpiece of the strange body, which met a hunched spine bound up with twine. The limbs were made of thin branches weaved together where they branched off into the hands and clawed fingers, feet and long toes at the ends. In one hand was a doll, which Charon recognized immediately—and unfortunately, so did Emmy.

"That—_That's the doll!_" She shrieked, pointing down at it with a trembling hand, her entire body convulsing. "_That's the __**fucking doll **__that I was telling you about! The one I found and you threw it! You can't tell me I was hallucinating!_"

"Emmy," He pleaded quietly as he stepped over the figure, taking a moment to stomp down on the skull so it shattered and went to her with his shotgun at his side. He knew that the swamp woman was close by, and he hoped she knew that his boot upon the skull was originally meant for her. "Calm down. It's just a coincidence."

"It is _not!_" She insisted, stepping back again just as he reached her and gently took her by the arm. "You can't tell me I was hallucinating, now!"

"Emmy, it didn't happen."

"...You can't tell me this didn't happen." She quickly shook her head and pulled her arm back from his grip, hugging herself tightly as the tears rimmed her eyes. "You _can't..._"

"Emmy, please—"

"_I know it happened!_" Emmy shrieked as the tears fully surged and trickled down her cheeks. "_I know it happened, I __**know **__that it's __**real!**_" She hugged herself tighter, turning away from him as she bit into her trembling lip. "Deep down, I—... I _know _it's real... I know it..."

Charon frowned softly to himself, stepping forward to put his hands on her shoulders and turn her back to face him. She stared up at him, helpless and desperate, as the tears continued to roll on down her cheeks.

"What happened out there didn't happen... you ate some bad punga and you began to hallucinate."

"Then how do you explain _that?_" She screamed at him, pointing accusingly down at the doll that laid in the hand of the bone and twig figure.

"You're paranoid." He spat, the words sounding acid when he didn't mean them to be and she suddenly stilled under his hands, gazing up at him with broken eyes.

"...You know something... don't you? You know that something happened out there and you won't tell me! Why, Charon? _Why?_" She looked to his hand that was upon her arm, her eyes tracing along the bandages until a thought struck her. "Something happened to you out there, too... you're hiding something from me and I _know _it! _I __**know**__you!_"

_Maybe you don't know me anymore,_ he thought a little sadly, and his heart leaped up into his throat when she pulled back from him and grabbed his arm, clawing at the leather cuff and glove he had fashioned and put over his skinned arm.

"_What are you doing?_" He demanded harshly, half-heartedly trying to pull his arm out of her grip. Part of him wanted to see what he was to become, what he _wanted _to be again, and part of him didn't want her knowing—because, maybe, to get what he wanted he would have to become more of a monster than he already was.

"I want to see what happened to your arm!" She exclaimed as if he were stupid, and continued claw at it, trying to rip them off and he winced when her nails dug in and felt as if they were going to pierce straight through them. He finally yanked his arm out of her grasp and held it above his head, hopefully out of her reach.

"Stop it, Emmy." He warned firmly.

"Why are you _lying_ to me?" She shrieked. "Why are you lying to me about all this? _Why, Charon?__** Why?**_"

They stood in silence for only a moment or two until Emmy didn't want to wait for him to answer anymore. She jumped up and latched onto his arm, catching him by surprise so he dropped his shotgun and was almost brought to his knees when she finally got his arm in her grasp again, held against the side of her body under her armpit. She tried pulling the glove from his fingers now as a starting point. He growled and yanked back, then grabbed her by her upper arms so tightly he almost hoisted her up from the ground, with the tips of her toes barely grazing the dirt.

"_**Stop it, **__Emmy!_" Charon barked, and she stared up at him with her mouth dropped open, completely stunned by his sudden attack. She went limp in his arms, as if trying to pull away from him but she still kept her eyes on his face.

"Have—Have you gone _feral?..._" She murmured under her breath in a small and frightened voice, and her words rolled around in Charon's head like a hornet's nest—stinging all his insides mercilessly. He put her back on her feet slowly, after a long pause between them. All he felt was regret, and anger. It was all he was able to feel for the last few days, since they dragged their battered bodies out of the swamp.

"...No." He murmured quietly back to her, as if he didn't want the word to leave his mouth but it did so, anyways. "I'm not feral. You would know."

"But you—you've never…"

"I've never what?"

"…You've never yelled at me like that…"

Charon stared at her with hard eyes until he looked away shamefully into the fog, almost expecting the swamp woman to be standing there and watching what she had orchestrated. He _knew_ she set up the figure for him—probably a warning, or even a reminder.

_But a warning for __**what? **__A __**reminder **__for __**what?**_

"...I—... I want to leave..." Emmy whispered and she hung her head down as she started to sob into her hands.

He froze. "...What?"

"I want to go back to D.C., Charon… I want to go back home." She looked up at him, her face contorted and pinched. "I want to _leave._ I don't want to be here anymore. This place is _bad, _Charon! It's doing things to me… It's doing things to _you! _We need to go back to the Capital Wasteland!"

Charon stared at her in horror, his heart tense in his chest as it pulled and tugged at all of the muscles in that area—constricting upon his lungs until he was no longer able to breathe properly. It wasn't supposed to be like this! He was supposed to get skin, again! He was supposed to become human again! _Completely _human! He couldn't leave now, not when he didn't even figure out what he could trade to that fucking swamp woman so he _could_ get his skin back!

He had to convince her to stay, he had to convince her somehow…

"It's not that bad here. You're just paranoid."

"_Charon, you __**grabbed **__me!_" She screeched with more tears rolling down her face. "_You yelled at me when I'm only concerned for you! You're hiding things from me, I __**know **__you are, and I don't know __**why!**__ You can't tell me that this place isn't changing you, too!"_

Charon stared at her, blinking idly and he said nothing because within his heart he _knew _she was right. This swamp was fucking with both of them… but he felt that he couldn't give up now. He would stay until it drove him completely insane because it would be worth it… right?

The ghoul stared down at his employer as she choked on her sobs and hiccupped, tears running down her reddened cheeks and mucous caressed her upper lip from her nose. He quickly wiped away the tears from her face, and chose to ignore seeing her flinch from his gentle touch, as if he were about to strike her across the face or grab her again.

_I have nothing to give the woman… nothing at all…_

"I'm sorry, Emmy… I really am." He murmured and more tears rolled down her face upon his apology. "I didn't mean to scare you. I apologize."

"Can—Can we… _go home?_"

_**NO!**_

"…Of course."

"Really?"

_**NO!**_

"Yes, Emmy… we'll go home."

_**NO, NO, NO!**_

Emmy trapped him in a tight hug and buried her head into his chest, her shoulders bobbing as she started sobbing again. He pet her hair because he didn't know what else to do; he felt lost and cornered, confused and despaired. Would it end like this? Would it _all_ end like this? Was he even allowed to leave Point Lookout and stray so far from the swamp woman? He honestly didn't know, and he was almost… afraid, to find out if he actually tried. He finally looked down at Emmy and froze when a voice rang out in the back of his head.

"_She is __**your **__possession to keep safe!"_

_She—She's not mine… __**I **__am __**hers.**_

"_It is __**you **__who is incorrect!_"

_Stop it!_ He held her tighter. _This is how it is. I am hers… __**I**__ belong to __**her. I belong to Emmy. **__I'm __**all **__hers._

"_It is __**you **__who owns her, ferryman of the tormented, and those who__** lead**__ and those who __**follow **__eternal damnation you own as __**well!**_"

_I don't own __**anyone.**__ I don't own __**anything.**_He closed his eyes and hunched over to bury his face into the top of her head amongst her hair.

"_It is __**you**__ who owns her, for it is you who protects her!_"

_**I don't own her.**__ Just because I protect her life doesn't mean that she owes me it._

"_She is __**your **__possession to keep safe!"_

_**Or does she?**_

"_She is __**your **__possession to keep safe!"_

_Maybe… she __**is**__ mine…_

"_She is __**your **__possession to keep safe!"_

_**No—**__this isn't __**right!**__ This is __**wrong!**_

"_She is __**your **__possession!"_

_**Not mine, not mine…**_

"_**Your **__possession!"_

_**NEVER MINE!**_

"_She is __**yours!**__"_

_**SHE IS NOT! SHE IS **__**NOT**__**! SHE IS NOT, SHE IS NOT, SHE IS **__**NOT**__**!**_

But then, a little voice in the back of his head whispered to him—and it was somehow louder than the yelling that echoed in his mind.

_**Emmy belongs to you. She is your possession. She will give you skin.**_

Charon was terrified to realize that the whisper was his own voice... the voice he had before he became a ghoul.

"C'mon, Charon..." She spoke softly as she pulled back to look up at him. A genuine smile graced her young face, and she didn't see or notice the panic in his expression. "Let's get back to the motel. We'll gather the rest of our things, see what we can get rid of to Panada and make our way back to the docks."

"...Okay." He answered as he stared down at her helpessly. Emmy took his arm and began to walk, as if guiding a blind man across a busy street. He fell in step behind her, allowing her to guide him back to Homestead, and within his gut he felt the bile beginning to rise.

It suddenly all made sense. What he owned, what he had to give in order to get his skin back—it was Emmy. He was a bodyguard loyal to the contract first, and then to his employer second. He had nothing to give but Emmy because, in truth, she _has _always been his... he didn't own his contract, it kept him bound to whoever bought it but she wasn't like his best employers. The people who owned his contract before also owned him, but Emmy?... She owned an old piece of paper. She didn't own him. Emmy allowed him to be his own person, to rightfully be his own man with his own ideals. Emmy made him happy and wanted, loyal out of want and not out of obligation.

She gave him a chance to feel human again, and now she was going to give him a chance to _be _human again. His metamorphosis would never be complete. He had to finish it. One body of flesh for another.

Charon watched as from out of the fog did the motel come to them as their feet hit the cracked streets of the tiny town. Coming back to the motel door, Emmy opened it and they stepped inside—in his sudden running towards the swamp and out of her sight, neither of them grabbed any of their belongings. She closed the door behind him and went to the trunk that was positioned at the foot of the bed, opened it, and sorted through it as he watched from his spot in the open doorway.

The motel room had a different air to it than earlier... it was definitely happier. Lively. Relieved. It was because of Emmy. She just radiated light and life from her... Emmy was beautiful.

_...What's it going to be, Charon?... Her, or being human again?_ Charon pondered sadly, then realized the question was not needed when he felt his hand upon the handle of his combat knife. Slowly pulling it from the sheath on his thigh, he silently advanced Emmy as she stood up, fumbling with something in her hands as he came up right behind her.

"Oh, I forgot about this." Emmy turned to face him, her head bowed down to the thing in her possession. "I've been meaning to give you—"

Emmy's words were silenced as the ghoul grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, pulling her forward into his combat knife. He felt it plunge deep into her stomach, felt the ripple of the serrated blade penetrating her flesh travel up his arm to quiver his heart, and the words parted from his cracked lips almost on their own—mechanically, as if he felt nothing, but this was completely destroying him inside.

"I'm sorry, Emmy... _I'm so sorry..._"

Her eyes were wide, gazing up at him and he could see past the glazed over blue of her irises, her thoughts tried to click together like the gears of a clock, trying to catch one another so the hands would succeed in moving. Unable to make the gears catch on her own, she slowly turned her eyes down where they met with the blade in her belly, his hand retreating from it as he slowly stepped back from her towards the wall with the words still mumbling forth from his lips almost incoherently.

"_I'm sorry... I'm __**sorry...**_"

"..._Why?..._ Wha—?..." Emmy's words trailed off as she continued to stare at his knife protruding from her. She still didn't understand—he didn't want to have to explain it to her as her blue eyes slowly turned back up to meet his, her bottom lip trembling. "...What have you done, Charon?..."

"_...I'm sorry..._" He replied in a guttural sob as he felt his eyes sting, his back connecting with the wall and it was the only thing keeping him up. "_I'm sorry!..._"

Her brow furrowed together, her face twisting up into one of realization as she began to sob, the item in her hands dropping from her grip to hit the floor with a hollow thud. It was a little trinket—a Vault Boy bobble head holding a giant needle. She bit by bit stepped towards him with weak legs, stepping over the trinket.

"...You stabbed me..." She muttered quietly, a faraway smile coming to her lips out of awe and disbelief of her bodyguard, and best friend, murdering her. He was the person she trusted most, and he fucking stabbed her. A soft chuckle slithered from her lips as she stopped in front of him. "You _stabbed _me..."

"I had to." Charon replied impassively. He wished he had some other answer to give her... he didn't want his last words to be that he _had _to kill her when, deep down, he didn't have to. He _shouldn't _have had to. Had he known it would have come to this—... _how did it come to this?_

"You're killing me..."

"...I'm sorry, Emmy..." He murmured as her body pressed to his, Emmy standing before him with her glossy eyes trained upon his face; her tears matching the ones that trickled down from his own eyes. "_I can't tell you how sorry I am..._"

"...You're killing me..." She spat again, blood forming upon her teeth within her mouth but she continued to smile, the last of her tears rimming her cheeks. "_And all I ever did was __**love **__you..._"

Emmy's eyes rolled up into her head as she collapsed forth into his outstretched and waiting arms. The only answer that parted from his gaping mouth was a strangled sob as he fell to the floor with his dead employer, cradling her on his lap with his hand patting at her cheek, his other arm wrapped under her limp body as he held her close to his chest. Charon rocked back and forth, continuing to let out an orchestra of strangled and incoherent sobs—but the words were only clear to him.

"_**And I loved you.**_"

* * *

><p>Charon traversed the swamp for three days, with the dead bod of Emmy cradled in his arms—his knife still deep within her belly. He couldn't bear to remove it from her let alone touch it, so he allowed her body to claim it. It was no longer his.<p>

As he walked through the marshes and bogs, passing poacher shacks out in the wild and creatures of other sorts, the swamp folk sat on the porches of their shacks on the steps and in their rocking chairs, watching him walk on by with silent looks while the creatures squatted amongst the reeds, making curious noises to one another. It was like some spell had taken over the swamp. It was like he was safe here... or maybe they just wanted to keep away from a crying ghoul that carried the dead body of a girl through the swamp trees and muck.

He had to find the swamp woman. He had to find her and give her Emmy—complete the deal, but now his desires were hazy and almost foreign within him. The returning of his skin felt so disgusting to him; but another part of him, some dark and twisted and _feral _part of him pushed him forward and told him that this pain he brought upon his shoulders would be gone and wiped clean once he was given back his skin. Emmy would just be another employer, his contract would go to someone else, and she'd spiral deep into the blackness of his mind where he would, night after night, force onto himself a lie of how she died by the hands of someone else and not from his blade plunged into her.

Charon blinked away the tears from his eyes, as they had not left since the day he killed Emmy and took her body with him out to the swamp—he felt, maybe somehow knew, that he wouldn't be rid of the saltwater upon his mottled face until his employer officially left his hands and he was rid of her... but he didn't want to be anymore. He didn't want to be away from her. He couldn't stop walking or looking ahead, because every time he stopped moving and his eyes fell upon her discolored face, he so desperately wanted her to open her eyes and smile at him and ask if they were home yet.

He had never wanted anyone so badly; he had never felt so much loss or pain or longing desire in losing someone. He never loved someone like he did Emmy—and it was love that was more than just the love of a friend or a lover or a sibling or an employee. It was love she never asked for or earned but he, somewhere down the line, had just _given _it to her... it was the unconditional love that Charon thought he didn't have the ability to give.

Rising up from out of the swamp gas and thick, discolored fog that swam around him did figures of twisted bone and twig emerge—hanging from their outstretched arms hanging dolls. Charon ignored them because he knew that he was getting close to the swamp woman, after three days of walking and searching, he was going to find her and it was all that was beginning to matter. The dolls would lead him back to her garden shed.

After some time of walking amongst the fog and the twig and bone figures and the ruined dolls with the judging button eyes, he found it in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by beautiful swamp trees swaying amongst the mist lazily with the wind intertwining within their branches and leaves to have them dance. The mouth of a cave protruded from the ground, covered over by heavy cloth curtains, and to the side of the cave's mouth did the old woman stand with her back facing him, on her knees with her back hunched, as she tore into the ground with clawing fingers and broken, bleeding fingertips. From across the clearing where she was, she sang an incomprehensible song with a broken voice, as if she were crying. The jar of eyes that he recognized from before was set on the ground next to her, watching her work, and when he stepped into the clearing they danced erratically within their jar before immediately turning around to stare back at him. The woman immediately stopped clawing at the ground, her shoulders squaring out, and her singing ceased.

"...I—... br- brought her... Emmy... the only thing I have left." Charon murmured, stepping towards the woman who remained still. "I had nothing left to give... she was all I had! The only thing I prized—! _You made me kill her!_"

The swamp woman rose to her feet suddenly, almost gliding up straight and immediately turned back to face him, the back of her hand striking him across the face with such tremendous force that his body was thrown backward, Emmy's body collapsing from his hands and onto the ground at the woman's feet. Charon landed in the mud, splashing it up onto him, and he gazed back at the swamp woman as she began to screech and sob.

"_**This was NOT what I asked for! I asked for what you cherished MOST in this world, you foolish—**_**FOOLISH-! **_**You damned foolish ferryman, Charon! What have you done?... What have you done?... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!**_"

"_This is it! This is what I give you!_" He screamed back, struggling to sit up from the pain that laced up his spine from how hard he hit the ground. "I cherished Emmy! _**I LOVED HER!**_"

"**FREEDOM.**" The woman spat, an immense grimace upon her trembling and bruised lips as she collapsed to her knees over Emmy, her mouth contorting to a shriek as she yelled at the sky, throwing herself over Emmy's body. "_You played __**God **__again when you are nothing but a measly __**ferryman**__ of souls! I demanded your freedom from your pole and vessel! Not __**death! NOT THIS!**_"

The broken ghoul stared at her, milky eyes wide upon watching the swamp woman lay over his dead employer's body and weep, like that of a mother crying over their dead child. The woman pulled Emmy into her lap, desperately hugging her tight with Emmy's head against her chest as her trembling hand, nails torn from digging and horribly bloody and infected, combed through her pale brown hair as more incomprehensible singing poured from the woman's quivering mouth. Harsh tears heavily stained the blindfold over her eyes.

_My... __**freedom...**__?_

Horrified realization caused Charon to flop back against the mud, gazing up into the rapidly darkening sky as clouds formed over his head and the rain pelted mercilessly down upon his battered body and the sobbing woman as she cradled and pet Emmy's cold face. He kept his eyes open, the tears that had plagued him for three long days abandoning his eyes as the rain fell upon him and the weight of the mistake he had made crushed his lungs of breath.

Charon loved Emmy, that was undoubtedly true. He loved her, as friend and employer, so deeply that he knew without having to admit aloud to anyone that if she were to ever die he would certainly follow after her because death would have been kinder. Love was different from cherishing, and what he cherished was his _freedom_ because it was a gift the Emmy had returned to him. She owned a piece of paper. She didn't own him and the paper didn't own him anymore. He wasn't a slave. He wasn't a bodyguard. He wasn't a brainwashed being. He wasn't a ghoul. He wasn't an animal, or a man, or anything else. He was—... he had been—... she gave him—!

_I was free._

Turning his head over, continuing to watch the woman howl bitterly at the sky while still clasping Emmy to her, infected fingertips digging into her brown hair and curled around the combat knife sticking out from her, Charon saw Emmy gazing back at him. Her eyelids were parted, and peeking out from between them did the blue of her eyes show like chips of dull sapphires and the words, once again, rippled through his brain like a tidal wave—completely washing over him—as he allowed his eyes to close, letting the last of his tears to fall.

_I... was... __**free...**_

* * *

><p><em>Part o' ten of the town's best men<em>

_Headed for old Hattie's shack—_

_Said Swamp Witch magic was useful, and good,_

_And they're gonna bring Hattie back._

_Never found Hattie, and they never found the shack,_

_And they never made a trip back in._

'_Twas a parchment note, they found tacked to a stump said;_

"_**don't come look'n again."**_

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Alright, SO! To explain the ending of this story, it basically goes as this_;_**

**Charon is told by the swamp witch that in order to get his skin back, he has to give over something that he cherishes most in this world. He convinces himself that the witch means Emmy, but it turns out that the witch was referring to Charon's freedom. Realizing much too late, Charon realized that the reason WHY he loves Emmy and would die for her is because she gave a lot for him and helped him see that his contract did not define who he was. She made him feel like a free man.  
><strong>

**The witch previously stated, in Chapter Two, that; "**I will cover your body in the skin that you once knew, and return to you what other else you have lost." **meaning that along with his skin, his complete freedom would be returned and the contract would no longer be a burden to him. Charon, a free man under Emmy (but still technically under the rules of his contract), kills her, so the contract between them becomes void and he has to do what he has always done when he is no longer in service to his employer. He must take his contract and find a new person to hold it, meaning that he has, again, become a slave to his contract by killing Emmy so he is no longer free. Now that he's no longer a 'free man', the deal can't be made between him and the swamp witch and he will never be given his skin.**

**If you're wondering why the swamp witch was digging into the ground near her home, it was because she knew beforehand that Charon had killed Emmy and so she was trying to dig out a grave to bury her in. She just didn't have the proper tools to dig, so instead she used her hands and had been digging so much that she broke her nails to the point that they bled, and the mud and dirt she dug into infected her fingertips.**

**A few facts for you!**

**One of the endings I had in mind was that the swamp witch (whom I named Frog-song) would actually turn Charon into a doll out of anger for wrongfully killing Emmy. I went with this ending because I felt that Charon having to live on with his guilt was a much more cruel punishment-just because I imagined that now that he's been retied with his contract for murdering Emmy, one of the rules is that he can't commit suicide so he would have to live on the rest of his life knowing what he has done.**

**Another fact for you; In the end of the first two chapters, Frog-song sings 'The Hearse Song' and 'Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby'. In this chapter, I was planning on having her sing '4 O'Clock' by Emilie Autumn, but based on Charon's final thought of being free, I felt that it would take away from the atmosphere of Frog-song suddenly singing (even though she is singing) so instead I left it as-is. I imagine it's the song she's singing/humming while she's digging Emmy's grave, though.**

**Frog-song is, if you hadn't guessed by now, a Swamp Witch. Charon wasn't hallucinating or dreaming or going crazy-everything that happened DID happen. Frog-song is gifted with unnatural abilities, so if Charon had given her the right thing, he WOULD have been given back his skin and hair and everything else that's good about being human. Who Frog-song is and how she came to be is a mystery, but in Chapter Two when she mentions a 'he' among the mentioned lines;** "_B__ut you don't __**scream.**__**You **__don't __**scream **__like __**he **__did… _would you still hold me, if I cut off your arms? Would you still walk away, if I cut off your legs? Yes, yes, a delicious idea! Then you will _never _leave again!… " **and **"Would you like for me to sing to you again? _He _didn't seem to like my singing… so I took his tongue if he thought he sounded better. But _y__ou _like my singing, don't you, my darling little sparrow?", **it can be guessed that she maybe had a lover once whom left her and the experience has left her bitter-to the point where she most likely severely harmed him out of her anger.**


End file.
